Virginia opossum. All images, Backyard Zoologist and Creative Commons
What a treat. Rosalie knocks on my door and says a baby opossum is scurrying about near her place. I search but don’t find it.
I didn’t have my camera, but gosh, that sweetie looked like a super-miniature terrier from the back.
Well, sort of.
Seeing it brought back memories of visits to the Ohio Wildlife Center while I was leading conservation work in our neighborhood ravine park, and a chance to hold their adult resident opossum. When animals cannot successfully be returned to the wild, the Center use them to educate and help us understand why these not-so-cute creatures are important to our ecosystem.
And good neighbors. Opossums are good neighbors? I know, I know. But keep reading.
They are scavengers (reminding us to keep our garbage cans sealed), eat carrion working with vultures so that we don’t have to clean up dead animals and despite that, are meticulously clean, and they love snails, slugs, snakes, and ticks, eating up to 4,000 a week. They make it so we don’t have to spray as many chemicals in our garden and they find snakes delicious, which some neighbors say are scary.
(I’ll write a post on snakes that will change your mind about snakes. Soon.)
Possums, like many other small and medium sized mammals, are hosts for ticks looking for a blood meal. But opossums are remarkably efficient at eliminating foraging ticks.
"In a way, opossums are the unsung heroes in the Lyme Disease epidemic."
Rick Ostfeld, author of a book on Lyme disease ecology and a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, explains...
"Because many ticks try to feed on opossums and few of them survive the experience. Opossums are extraordinarily good groomers it turns out – we never would have thought that ahead of time – but they kill the vast majority – more than 95% percent of the ticks that try to feed on them. So these opossums are walking around the forest floor, hoovering up ticks right and left, killing over 90% of these things, and so they are really protecting our health." (Cary Institute)
So it's in our best interest to have opossum neighbors.The opossum is the United State’s only marsupial. The one we see in our neighborhood is the Virginia opossum. It has a prehensile, grasping tail, and like kangaroos and koalas, mama opossum carries its babies in a pouch. (Jack from Timberlake stopped to introduce himself and say he saw an opossum hanging by its tail!)
Oh! And their abilities. I’m quoting Backyard Zoologist: “One thing I find particularly endearing about opossums is their hands and how they use them.
They actually have opposable “thumbs” on their back feet, so they are excellent climbers (and swimmers) and sometimes use their hands to eat." Here is a minute video of an adorable baby opossum using its hands to eat a grape.There are two things an opossum does when they’re afraid: they offer a huge “smile” to show their 50 teeth. They hope that scares off what or who they confront. If not, their fear causes an automatic reflex that causes them to literally pass out and flop over, sometimes with their tongue out.
Accounts of an opossum carrying rabies are extremely rare.
Their lifespan in the wild of Wildewood Springs is about two years.
