when possum comes a-knockin...

The Virginia Opossum is the only North American marsupial. It has more teeth than any other mammal (50). It has opposable thumbs on its back feet, which makes it dextrous; and a prehensile tail, which it uses when climbing (not to hang by). Such an interesting animal...

Everything I've read says that these wild animals rarely cause problems for farmers and ranchers. Apparently this possum didn't get the memo. We have a nice secure coop, so this "nocturnal" animal shouldn't be causing us any problems except that opossums "may become diurnal during cold weather". That means if you free range your chickens and leave the coop open during the day, the opossum can get in and eat all the eggs! That means possum has got to go.

We found eggshells in the nest boxes day after day and were wondering if it was the cat...or the chickens themselves! Then, one afternoon I went to collect eggs and found a possum neatly curled up in one of the nest boxes. I left it and although my husband rustled it out of the box with a long-handled shovel later that night, we couldn't get it out of the coop - so we left the door open, hoping it would leave. No such luck. The next morning I found it curled up in the corn barrel. What to do, now? Leave it there to eat and poop in the corn all day?

I had some pretty thick insulated gloves and my Carhart jacket on, so I slowly reached in, picked it up and set it down outside! It was surprisingly docile - it was not exactly "playing dead", but it didn't bare it's 50 teeth and hiss at me either. I left the chickens locked up in the coop for a few days and we didn't see the possum again for a while. It warmed up and I let the chickens out again. It wasn't but a day before I found eggshells in the coop and a few days later I found the durn critter in a nest box again. So I picked it up and put it in the trap that we bought after a raccoon (or something) had killed our first flock of ducks. The possum never did play dead or hiss, but bared its 50 teeth briefly when I came out with the camera to get a quick picture.

Now, I suppose the "humane" solution would have been to keep the chickens locked up in the coop until possums go back to being nocturnal. We keep the eggs and grain safe from predation and the possum lives happily ever after until it gets hit by a truck. (They only live about two years in the wild). We weren't all that crazy about co-existing peacefully with an opportunist who knows where there is a free lunch available, though, so we decided to release it 10 miles away by a wooded river so it had a chance (however slim) to start a new life away from our chickens, bird feeders, and compost heap (where I've seen opossums scrounging before we had chickens). Now the chickens are happy to be outside eating all the lovely green grass that has been hidden beneath the snow and the various bugs that overwintered there.



*Whenever I hear "possum" I think of Possum Come A-Knockin' by Nancy Van Laan, illustrated by George Booth, hence the title of this post.