Are Opposums Harmful?

[AEA]

Ny Niece had a Mobile Home in the country and a family of Possums moved in underneath it. They ripped out all the insulation on the underside of the trailer and spread it out in the yard!

[TheArmedFarmer]

I once "killed" a possom with a pitchfork. It had been making a nightly nuisance of itself, and one night I cornered it in my fenced backyard, so I grabbed the pitchfork that was next to me and plunged it down right in the middle of its body. The spines of the fork pierced the animal all the way through the right arm, the back quarter, the left hand, and then right in the middle of the chest.

I left it like this for several minutes, posed for some pictures, and then, assured it was dead, proceeded to place the dead animal into a trash can. As soon as I pulled the fork out of its body, however, it sprang back to life and scrambled right out of that can! Scared me exactly half to death!

It was afterwards that I looked at the pictures that I realized there was no blood at all at where the fork went through the body. VERY strange.

So that nobody disbelieves my story, here are the photos:

http://i43.tinypic.com/28ls8wl.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/2menwbs.jpg
http://i40.tinypic.com/2d8rvhz.jpg

[Oldgringo]

Does the expression "playin' possum" ring any bells?

[richbrismith]

I have Opposums all over my prperty and a skunk living in my barn- as long as thyey don't tear anything up and leave my horses alone- we just co-exist

[txfireguy2003]

They also carry a desease that paralyzes and kills horses, I know because the best (and most expensive) horse I ever owned died from it. It's called "Equine Protozoan Encephalo-myalitis" and is carried in the feces of opposums and pigeons, and it transmitted to the horses via water troughs. That said, any oppossum that comes near my property dies ASAP. The last one was on the front porch and my dog was going ballistic...he NEVER barks unless something is wrong. I walked out the front door in my shorts, barefooted, and down the sidewalk. He's still barking at the front door, so I turn around and there stands Mr. Oppossum, hissing, growling, teeth bared ready to rumble. I went back in another door and got the trusty .22 and popped him behind the head, he waddled off and "died" behind some bushes in the flowerbed. I decided I needed to get him out of there, and went to reach and suddenly remembered Grandpa talking about "playing oppossum". So, I fashioned a snare out of some PVC pipe and Romex electrical wire. As I slipped the loop over his head, he went nuts, shredding the insulation around the wire. Took 2 more bullets to the head before he stopped for good. They are normally docile I suppose, but I don't like them, and they can be EVIL when they want to be.

[Rockrz]

Cut him up and use him for bait to get bigger prey

[nitrogen]

'possums are fun!

Here's some pictures of a guy I know posing with possums that constantly invade his garage.

[boomerang]

[LarryH]

I like the macaw. Nice touch.

[kd5zex]

Now that's funny stuff!

[mctowalot]

Hi everyone, first post in long time but this subject brought back an old memory I just had to share with y’all.

During the first years of our marriage my wife and I lived in a pretty rough neighborhood on the north side of Houston. Directly behind us lived a nice elderly couple and I always tried to keep an eye out for them. The folks next door to them always had lots of visitors at all hours of the night, and often had backyard “parties” with music booming and some rather peculiar smelling smoke wafting into our yards. Since my wife and I worked nights together, this really didn’t bother us, but I always felt kind of sorry for the old folks behind us. I was also concerned that one of the “guests” might jump a fence and attempt to help themselves to some of our property (or worse). I was pretty sure I had seen somebody peeping through the pickets a time or two.

One night I was showering getting ready for work, and my wife came in and told me that our dogs were barking like crazy at the back fence and she felt somebody might be in the yard. She had armed herself with our Ruger .45 long colt and a streamlight (we have since gathered a few more appropriate self defense side arms but that’s what was handy at the time). I told her to wait for me – I didn’t want her confronting whatever the threat was by her self. But she was really worried – about the dog’s safety!

She lit up the yard with the stream light and came running back to tell me that “the biggest rat she had ever seen in her life” was on top of the fence and it was hissing and had huge fangs. She was really worried it would hurt the dogs and wanted to know if she should go ahead and shoot this monster. Of course I said no and tried to tell her it was an opossum but she had run back outside - to protect the dogs.

I got to the back door and heard the usual booming music and I could not believe how close she was to the opossum. It was frozen in the beam of the stream light and she was taking a bead on it with the Ruger. At this point I yelled out “don’t shoot!” and simultaneously the old man that lived behind us, drawn to all the commotion, smacked the opossum with a broom knocking it off the fence and straight towards my wife. She shrieked, and our little terrier mix sprang into the air like superdog and got the opossum by the throat. The dog –who wasn’t much bigger than the opossum – shook it for all she was worth and then let it go. Of course the critter lay on the ground and my wife exclaimed “he’s dead!-he’s dead!” and thus began my hurried explanation that it wasn’t dead it was just “playing possum”.

Concerned for my life I grabbed a shovel, raised it over my head and smacked that thing as hard as I could – really I was afraid it would hurt the dog. When that shovel made contact it rang like the liberty bell! Would you believe that thing jumped up and started towards us? I whacked it again and it was pretty apparent that this time it wasn’t faking – don’t want to gross you out but it was obviously dead, trust me. And I shouted, “see, I told you that sucker was playing dead!”. To which my wife responded, “Well, he’s dead now!”

Well, the punch line is that only after all this did we realize were making such a racket that the “party people” had switched off the music and I’m out there yelling stuff like “don’t shoot!” at the top of my lungs and whacking the heck out of this thing with a shovel. I looked at the fence and noticed a pretty large group of people were watching all this through the pickets, but due to the bushes and what not they couldn’t see what was getting whacked, they just knew that “I told you he was playing dead” and that he was " dead now”.
They never had a late night backyard party again, and the peeping through the pickets seemed to stop too.

[stevie_d_64]

A possum killed one of my mom's cats in her backyard down here in Clear Lake last year...

They are kinda nasty, but they are obviously a wild animal that is attracted by our trash, and other things we leave outside for them to exploit...Not much we can do about that, but taking care of them is kinda tricky...Shooting them (discharging a firearm in the city limits) in some urban areas I would imagine is kinda frowned upon...

Live trapping is an option, but with all the goodies we leave around, getting them to notice any bait in a live trap can be a time consuming exercise...

To me they do not move very fast, and if you can wop them with a broom handle they might get the idea it is not a good idea to hang out around you again...My Grandmother and Grandfather taught me that trick...

Just my 2 cents...

[Abraham]

mctowalot,

That's a great story!

kd5zex,

I laughed so hard at the poster, I blew coffee all over the monitor.

[oilman]

Several years ago I saw something run across the backyard of my house in Houston. I looked out and saw what I though was a rat on the patio. I went out the back door and yelled at it hoping to scare it away. I knew it wasn't a rat when it turned on me and bared its teeth. It then went under a bush and played dead for at least 30 min. Did not have any firearms at the time (this was several years ago as I said) and may not have used one even if I did as the houses were so close together.

After 30 minutes the possum "revived" and crawled down into a PVC drainage pipe that went vertically down into the ground. This pipe connected to a horizontal PVC pipe that carried rainwater to the street.

Once the critter went down that vertical pipe he could not climb out and eventually drowned. Then we had to fish him out and dispose of the carcass.

[Venus Pax]

We see a lot of them out here. My outside cat actually seems to think they're cats too; he says that they're inbred, which is why they look a bit different.

We can usually scare them by letting the dog see them, then cracking open the door while he barks uncontrollably.

The raccoons are more of a concern to me than the opossums. They are the reason that I bring my outside cat indoors at night.