Found an Opposum in my Lilacs!!!

[ams3651]

possoms are scavengers. they will eat carcass, left over pet food left on the ground, bugs. They will most likely run the other way or be stunned if approached. They will bite if trapped or threatened.

 

[amazondoc]

Oh, my little heart just swells with pride at all you fine fine possum preservers.

Possums are not the most beautiful or smartest creatures on God's green earth, but they are not evil beasts either. They are scavengers, and one of their best traits so far as I'm concerned is that they eat slugs (as well as other insects). Just leave em alone, and they'll leave you alone!

 

[lleighmay]

Here are 2 of the 8 babies I'm raising after their mama was killed by a car about a month ago... They're horribly misunderstood and incredibly neat (America's only marsupial and have been the same for a few million years) and deserve a chance if they can get one. Mine will be turned loose after being "hacked back"(a falconer's term) in a pen (coincidentally attached to the chicken run) to get used to foraging for their food and I consider it a privilege to be granted the opportunity to help them survive.

 

[important]

you don't say! I have a lilac tree that has been doing poorly and my bushes have been chewed on. I have one boy and one girl and we were all minding our own buisness during spring break when my daughter who was outside ran in petrified. I looked out the window and saw a possum on our lilac! It was the middle of the day! i think he had rabies, and we didn't have time to call for help before he ran off. KIDS WANTING TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL CAUSE THE DON'T WANT TO BE BIT BY THE OPOSSUM!

 

[dekel18042]

you don't say! I have a lilac tree that has been doing poorly and my bushes have been chewed on. I have one boy and one girl and we were all minding our own buisness during spring break when my daughter who was outside ran in petrified. I looked out the window and saw a possum on our lilac! It was the middle of the day! i think he had rabies, and we didn't have time to call for help before he ran off. KIDS WANTING TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL CAUSE THE DON'T WANT TO BE BIT BY THE OPOSSUM!

Please google this, but I'm pretty sure I've read several times opossums are one of the very few mammals who don't get rabies. Raccoons, foxes and skunks are another story.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Please google this, but I'm pretty sure I've read several times opossums are one of the very few mammals who don't get rabies. Raccoons, foxes and skunks are another story.

Scientifically considered "extremely unlikely/rare" but not entirely impossible - they are considered resistant to it (theory being it has to do with their low body temperature). That being said - rabid or not they can/do carry other diseases and could, if provoked or feeling threatened, do significant damage - especially to a child.

 

[Folly's place]

As a horse owner too, I'm on the other side of the fence when it comes to possums near my barn. They carry Sarcocystis neurona, a very nasty parasite that kills and cripples horses. Out in the woods, great. In my yard or barn, absolutely not. Mary

 

[Bengt747]

While opossum are generally scavengers and may not pose a huge threat compared to raccoon or mink, I don't like to test the odds and prefer to dispatch predators, particularly during the open hunting/trapping seasons.

I hesitate to relocate predators for several reasons, namely that predators are used to traveling relatively long distances. They may have a "home range" so to speak, but the animal is not confined to that area and will regularly leave if resources are inadequate. You may move a opossum several hundred yards, but that same opossum could easily be back two days later (or within hours) looking for handouts or poultry snacks. Additionally, I would hate to think that by releasing a predator out in the country that that same predator would end up at a nearby farm, eating eggs and harassing a poultry owner's flock.

(The pictures of the little opossum are rather adorable, though...)

 

[patohunter]

They can get rabies (though less likely to) and they do kill and eat chickens if they get in the hen house.

 

[DylansMom]

We raise Peacocks in our big barn and we also have 100% free range chickens that live in there. For about a dozen years now a family of Opossoms have lived in an unused stairwell on one end of said barn, the chickens come and go as they please and roost at one end where their unused coop sits. Our Opossums will come out and eat with the cats and the chickens, they have stolen a couple eggs over the years, but have never tried to harm a chicken or Peacock and I have some serama so very small compared to an Opossum. I have a feeling an Opossum probably has to be near starving and very desperate to try to kill a chicken, as we've never seen it. We just put down extra cat food an take a live and let live approach, if they were to kill one of our birds that would change.