Opportunistic Opossum

[xpatUSA]

Living on wooded acreage has it's moments.

I hang the occasional excess trash on the outside wall. This Christmas was no exception. Heard noises outside yesterday evening and went to investigate:



Terrible shot with a garden rake in one hand and a cell-phone plus flashlight in the other. Poked it with the rake handle and it wouldn't budge (literally 'playing possum') - so I gave it a gentle whack on the back and it dove inside the trashbag.

So I carefully (they've got 50 teeth) put the bag on the ground and gave it a kick. Finally, the animal shot off into the night.

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mam...ossum-info.htm
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[Shadowman]

Nice capture.

[rpcrowe]

The Possum is a nasty character when cornered. My dogs had one treed in a fig tree last month and I got the dogs back in the house before I also poked it with a stick and chased it out of my yard.

My last house had a wooden fence in the backyard on which a possum (or possums) would quite frequently crawl, driving my dogs crazy. I solved that problem by pounding nails into the top of the fence boards and then clipping the nail heads off to form a point. No more possums on that fence...

[Mike Buckley]

Nice capture.

An even better release of the animal!

[Wavelength]

Funny

[IzzieK]

Well! a possum is better than a raccoon...at least they eat insects (sorry macro people). If we do not have dogs, Bill would love three of them in our backyard. Good catch...sorry about your disturbed sleep...

[Manfred M]

This situation looks familiar, except we have raccoons, which are larger, messier and more aggressive.

[Ziggy]

Agree that raccoons are the worst.