A visit of an 'old' friend -The Possum

A visit of an 'old' friend -
The Possum

A few days ago, I saw a small animal in the snow under our bird feeder. It was partially obscured in the depression of packed snow under the feeder, hidden behind the walls of the surrounding two feet of snow we’ve had in the last few weeks. It was much smaller than any of the visiting raccoons or neighboring cats that forage under the feeders, so it caught my attention. After a few minutes it showed itself and it was a small possum!

The Possum (or Opossum), America’s only marsupial, goes back 20 to 23 million years. It has a bad reputation. I guess his appearance has something to do with it. As they are usually nocturnal,  you often see them in a beam of light. The shaky shadows of a hand held light probably make it look even more scary. It looks like a big rat, with beady eyes, a long prehensile naked tail and it seems to eat everything. When I saw my first possum I thought it was creepy. This was reinforced later with a close encounter.

I was at a friend's house chatting on her back deck, when we saw a possum climb up a tree where she had hung a suet feeder. Wanting to see if the old saying “playing possum” was a real thing, we ran up on it and it dropped to the ground, hissed at us and promptly dropped on its side and appeared to die immediately! It was really unsettling. Within moments, its lips curled all the way back exposing all its teeth, the gums and mouth turned an awful yellowish grey, the body became stiff as if rigor mortis had already set in, and it quickly started to emit a very foul odor. I’m not surprised that close encounters like this have put people off of possums.

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But this is a very unfortunate and undeserved impression! Truth be told, they are actually very beneficial sanitary workers, keeping our surroundings healthy and safer for all of us! They should be welcomed in the neighborhood.

Compared to other wildlife, they are very helpful and play an essential role in the ecosystem. They consume a variety of foods like beetles, slugs and snails (your home gardens are thankful), but also rotting vegetation, which they prefer to fresh. They are cleaning up dropped fruits and vegetables in the garden.

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Perhaps the biggest benefit of possums is their ability to control ticks, which might carry Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The possum consumes - through careful grooming, 95 % of the ticks which ride on their bodies. It is estimated that it eats 5000 ticks a year. 

And there are other items on its menu card, like mice, rats, and snakes (even poisonous ones). As they are scavengers they clean up carcasses, which can spread disease to you and your pets - not to mention foul smells. 

They do not get rabies or botulism (early theories said that the foaming at the mouth was rabies, which proved to be untrue). They are immune to toxins in bee and scorpion stings.

As it does not dig deep holes, it is not injurious to your landscaping, but it might occupy burrows of other animals. If you leave cat food outside, it will eat it. It might be happy to move into your garage or outbuilding and feed on the contents of your garbage bags. But I’ve never met anyone who has adopted one as a pet or cohabitant. (Are you surprised?)

And what about the American expression “playing possum” (pretending to be dead)? It is one of their defense mechanisms: they are playing dead.  Most hunting predators only eat what they kill when they can. They won’t touch a carcass in most circumstances. “Playing Dead” is actually an involuntary reaction - a lot like fainting, that causes the possum to seize up. When it is in this state, it will bare its teeth, have foam at the mouth and produce a foul smelling fluid from an anal gland to mimic sickness. It will remain like that for up to four hours. Predators will easily avoid such an animal.

Baby possums are called joeys, like baby kangaroos. They are not bigger than a honeybee when they are born. After birth they will crawl into the mother’s pouch and will stay there for two to three months. As they get older, they venture out of the pouch, but instead of wandering around they cling to the mother’s back as she scavenges. And they have prehensile tails like new world monkeys, anteaters and tree pangolins. They can curl and grip with their tails to help them climb and anchor themselves.

Possums are considered to be living fossils, as they go back 20 to 23 million years. Interestingly you will find them everywhere on the globe, even if they might look a little different, they belong to the same family - the order Didelphimorphia. They originated in South America and spread into North America when the two continents connected. Because of its varied diet, non-specialized biology and reproductive habits (it doesn’t need to nest or den for example), it has been able to colonize most of the world. Generalists always tend to survive better in varying environments.

Possums have survived the reach of time that included the Earth’s tectonic plates bringing together today’s North and South Americas, and then having time for them to spread around the world! It is truly amazing to be able to watch this living fossil.

So next time you see a ‘creepy’ possum, perhaps give it a nod of appreciation for keeping the neighborhood clean. It is just one of the army of sanitation workers (some species of mammals, birds, fish, insects and bacteria, etc.) that keep our world humming and clean. The possum should be a welcome visitor, but perhaps not a house guest.