Our Resident Opossum

The Opossum, North America's only marsupial,  a fun animal to have in the yard!

I am reading opossums are smart, smarter than dogs, but I'm thinking it is not too smart since it wanders often in our large trap (we have this trap set up for raccoons visiting our koi pond) ... or maybe it IS smart enough to know it gets a yummy treat and will be let go early in the morning ;-)






Just look at those toes and nails. Opossums have thumbs on their hind feet as well.





Nature's sanitation workers, they help keep the environment clean and healthy by eating dead animals (carrion) and over-ripe fruit.

For us gardeners they are great to have around since they love snails and slugs, cockroaches, and other insects.  And as an added bonus they hunt roof rats and mice.

Don't worry about an opossum in your yard, they do not dig the dirt, don't destroy property and  they are very disease resistant.



Off it goes to hide and sleep away the day



Our opossum's usual hangout is behind a garden bench under a banana stand close by the AC units



Learn more at the National Opossum Society website

4 comments:

  1. Evi da habt ihr schöne Bilder gemacht
    ich freue mich , über das kleine Nutztier
    ist ja eine Hilfe für den Garten

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice to know that you have a natural pest control agent.
    I wished something like that dwells in my garden to control the rats, mice, snails & slugs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello
    In Australia we used to call them Opossums but now they are just possums and they must be a different species cause ours eat all our plants at fence or roof height. And of course they love eating the leaves on trees.

    Gosh it would be so good to have an animal that ate snails and rats etc.

    But not ours I am afraid, still they are cute, I love watching them watching along the telephone lines.

    ReplyDelete