Translate

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

POSSUM FACTS

The possum is still THE topic of conversation or rather speculation at our house and among our friends.  What are their habits?  Are they nocturnal?  Will he show up during the day?  What do they eat besides (probably) garbage?  I've done some online sleuthing and came up with some very interesting information.  Apparently possums are fare-beaters as well as opportunists.  One guy (could it be our visitor?) decided to head to Manhattan (it probably was a Saturday night) by hopping a ride on a D Train out of Coney Island.  Read the attached article:

There are celebrity opossums.  YouTube has video of Ratatouille, the snowboarding opossum:

There was Heidi, the cross-eyed possum in Germany who recently passed on (her videos are on YouTube).

Wikipedia has a wealth of information and so does The National Opossum Society website. I did find out the following: opossums are nocturnal, they don't live very long (about 2 to 4 years), they eat garbage, pet food and roadkill (among other things) which makes Brooklyn a great place to hang out.  The possums came to New York at the invitation of our City Officials.  The deal was for the new immigrants to wipe out the rat population then die off but it didn't exactly work out that way.  The New York Post carried an online article about the booming possum population back in January.  So, for now, we will just be extra diligent concerning Annie's backyard evening forays.  I'd rather put up with the possum since he's part of the Rat Patrol.  Come to think of it, there haven't been that many rats on the subway tracks lately.

No comments:

Post a Comment