On 7/28/2016 9:42 AM, Dave Smith wrote:
> On 2016-07-28 8:53 AM, nancy young wrote:

>> Did not expect to find a possum. I was afraid to open the
>> thing to let it out, would it attack me? I have a horror of
>> having to get rabies shots. Then it was in a sunny spot and it
>> was hot so I wanted to cover it.
>>
>> It was a mess. And I learned that they aren't always shy.

> Opossums were all but unheard of around here until about 40 years ago.
> One scared the bejeepers out of me when I opened up the barn after it
> had been closed up all winter. I slid the door open and say the biggest
> damned rat ever and if it had been a rat and was still alive it could
> have jumped up and bit my head off. As it turned out. It was a dead
> opossum.

Are you sure? (laugh) Was it there the next day?

I have a funny memory that is kind of a visual, but picture it.
My dog was barking after I'd let her out at night. I don't let my
dog just bark so I went to see what's up. On the fence was a
possum, frozen still with two legs in the air. I guess we startled
it when I let the dog out. It was so funny. I brought the dog in
and kept checking back. Their muscles must freeze, it stayed in that
position for a long time. Like it was walking along the top of the
fence and was hit by a freeze ray.

> I have only seen two live opossums here. It was rooting around under the
> bird feeder and it put on a pretty good show when I approached it. The
> second one was crossing the road while I was on my way home late one
> night. The road was covered with fresh snow. I braked to let him cross.
> He made it to the other lane. Unfortunately, when I hit the brakes the
> back end of my pickup swung to the left. I missed him with the front
> tires, but the back tire got him. I do see a lot of opossum road kill.

I rarely see them run over. It's raccoons here, and lots of deer.
Oposums are so slow, don't cross the road!

nancy