Very droll, I like it! (Even though I think possums are kind of cute.)

Everything What's Wrong with People...........I could write that one. Don't have time right now, but the person knows nothing about possums. Some of the good things about possums....they eat mice, roaches, slugs, snails, ticks, carrion....darned near everything. Mostly they don't live in holes in the ground or dig. They live under brush piles or in or under old buildings. They don't carry rabies, distemper or parvo. They can carry a parasite that causes a paralytic disease in horses, but so do birds and other animals. You can tell how concerned about it I am....not at all. They are 70 million years old....living dinosaurs. The only marsupial in North America. Babies are born after only 13 days gestation....born as literal embryos. Travel from birth canal to pouch, attach to a teat. A mama possum has 13 teats. I have handled thousands of possums and only found one with 13 babies. Average is 7. Sometimes 10. Rarely. Mother drips milk....they do not nurse like most mammals. Orphans have to be fed by stomach tube. They have high calcium requirements...my possums eat yogurt every night and things like chicken necks. (Insects and snails are very high in calcium). Very, very rarely will a wild possum bite you if you pick it up. Most pick them up by their tails. I don't. I pick them up under their stomach, like I would a cat. Not by the skin on their neck....they don't have loose skin. The only possums that have ever bitten me were injured or had been terrorized by people or dogs, or ones I have raised. They have 50 sharp teeth. I get bitten fairly often. I must be used to whatever bacteria they have in their mouths, because I never get infected from it. It hurts and is almost healed the next day.

I used to get all the possums trapped by the Houston pound....around 500 a year. Some had been left in traps and they had chewed the wire until they wore their jaws down until you could see the teeth sitting on the jawbone. That takes 6 months to heal. A long time in the life of a possum, because a wild possum seldom lives more than a year, year and a half. Even in captivity, they have short life spans. A four year old possum would be about like a 100 yr old person. Very geriatric.

The only possums that I see that even have fleas are those that came from living in town and lived somewhere like under a house or some place with a lot of cats that were infested with fleas. Very seldom does one have fleas. If they do, I treat it with frontline. I worm them with an injectible cattle wormer.

I could write more....but I will just say that the last thing I ever wanted to do was rehab any animal. I dread spring every year because the shelters send me baby possums to raise. I could quit but there is no one to take my place. Every year someone sends me a possum that was raised by a human and not fed right and they have metabolic bone disorder....short, clubby legs, can't walk. Deformed heads. It is awful. I put them down or send them to the wildlife center to be put down. I have kept a couple that didn't have it really bad, but they were non releasable. I like possums. They are one of my favorite animals. I feel like I have a lot in common with them. We are both misunderstood scavengers.

They are definitely misunderstood creatures. The last orphan we raised was found alone, in the road beside its mother's carcass. I don't know if there were others, possibly picked off by kestrels or other birds. When my daughter handed it to me, my first thought was, "Oh, no, not again." I told her next time to keep driving--don't stop.

But it was a great experience for my grandson, just as it was for my kids. I knew someone who said she raised a 'possum on canned fruit cocktail, years ago, but I never saw it to assess it's health. We collected grasshoppers, spiders, and earthworms to supplement the feeding of the ones we raised, so they would recognize wild food when they were released.

My grandfather brought me the first one I raised and released, when I was about 13. I recall walking into the kitchen with it on my arm, and a visitor of my mom's screamed and ran from the room. She thought it was a rat, but wasn't at all reassured to find that it was just a 'possum. We've never been bitten, but many times I've pried little 'possum claws open, to release strands of my daughters' hair. ;)