Not Just Playing Possum

[rowyn]

When Lut got home last night, he gave me a call at work to warn me. "There's a possum in front of the garage door. I think it's just playing dead, because I can see it breathing. But you should be careful if it's still there when you get home, in case it's sick or rabid."

It was still there when I got home. I could see movement in its upper abdomen, too, which I took for breathing until I saw two tiny squirming tails attached to little squirming rears. Baby possums! Now I wasn't sure if she was breathing or if the movement I saw was just them.

Lut had been doing research, and determined, among other things, that (a) possums can play possum for hours, (b) they very rarely contract rabies, and (c) they're marsupials, so they have a pouch. Hence, the babies I'd seen had gotten there via her pouch

So we were optimistic that she might be feigning death. Nonetheless, Lut dug up a wildlife sanctuary and I gave them a call, and left a message.

This morning, I still hadn't heard from the wildlife sanctuary. The possum was still in the same place, with babies now squirming inside her pouch and not otherwise visible from without.

I called animal control and left another message at the wildlife sanctuary. As Trask suspected, animal control is just going to dispose of the dead momma possum and her still-living babies. Poor baby possums. ;_;

Comments

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

Lut is quite right - only rarely to opossums contract rabies due to a lower body temperature that does not allow the virus to survive. However, some wildlife rehab centers (such as the one I'm volunteering for now) are not equipped to handle opossum rehab so an individual, licensed rehabilitator is called in to do the job, instead. It's possible that your wildlife sanctuary knows of such a person; if you can actually talk to a live, human being there, ask about it? Worth a shot!

Poor orphaned 'possums! :(

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever seen a possum actually pretending to be dead. I've seen two that I thought were pretending, but they were both still there days later and the second one left an icky stain on the ground when someone finally came to take it away.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

After the big hurricane that hit Orlando years back (resulting in some damage to my garage door that left a bit of a gap where it wouldn't roll down quite all the way), I had a problem with a baby 'possum that snuck into the garage and was dragged into the house (through the cat door to the garage) by our cat. Gwendel screamed when she saw it, and thought it was dead, but I was pretty sure that the little 'possum could be, you know, just playing 'possum. Sure enough, it was, and by the time I found my gloves, it had wandered into the bedroom and I had a whole adventure extracting it.

Later (when I thought I had the garage door problem fixed, but NOT QUITE after all), I had two 'possums that snuck into the garage, and I ended up herding them into a makeshift trap and grabbing them (one at a time!) by their tails. In my panic, I had a 'possum by the tail at one point without a sure idea of just where I was going to put him, and he started exuding a green mucus from his mouth as he started going limp. I think I've heard something about that before (the frothing bit, that is), though never that it was green. (Maybe it was sick?) Anyway, I ended up cramming both 'possums into a cat carrier and releasing them outside of town. Whew. They hissed a lot, and had a very disagreeable scent.

Regards this incident - I feel bad about the 'possum pups! I can't say as I felt particularly fond of either one of the 'possums that got into my garage, but they were still maybe just a little cute in a strange ugly-but-cute 'possum way. (And the baby 'possum that visited our house briefly was adorable.)

[rowyn]

Grown-up possums are still a little cute, yes. The babies, of course, are "MUST LOVE AND PROTECT!" ky00t. Cuteness is *so* a survival trait. I wanted to get some video of them squirming and "chh"-ing, but I couldn't remember how to get the video on my camera working.

[rowyn]

I've seen opossums wandering around this neighborhood before -- they're not uncommon -- but I've never seen any of them playing dead. This was the first one I thought might've been. The other times I've seen dead opossums, they'd been run over and were quite obviously not faking it. :(

[elvenlaughter.livejournal.com]

No don't let them! Save the baby possums!

[rowyn]

I ... did, actually. Thank you for the encouragement. :)

[elvenlaughter.livejournal.com]

YAY! Good for you! I really hate that protocol so many times includes "disposing" of babies. It just feels callous and wrong to me, and makes me want to kick someone in a position of power.

[rowyn]

The woman at the wildlife center said that if I'd been in one of the adjoining cities, instead of Emerald City, Animal Control might've been more helpful. Apparently Emerald City Animal Control is particularly bad about it. v.v

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

Poor possums... *sigh*

[sandramort.livejournal.com]

Dispose of them? That's horrible! Even if they were going to put down, that's better than disposing of live animals to die slowly!

[rowyn]

Yeah, I was thinking last night that even if they didn't make it, at least I'd've made their last hours more comfortable.