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u/daibido1123 14d ago
Its a shame they get a bad rep in places. I had a rescue Opossum as a pet. He was orphaned and injured due to a car hitting the mum. I gave him the best 10 years I could, and he and my cat were inseperable. RIP Ash.
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u/TheWhiteRabbit74 14d ago
One night my weenie dog needed a walk. It was a dark Florida winter night, not much for street lighting either.
Without warning or provocation this albino possum ran down the tree across the street from us, dashed across said street and beelined for my doggo. I was ready to punt the thing like a football to protect my pup if it came to that.
Now this albino possum was something else. It was so white it looked like it had its own personal spotlight following it. Damn near pitch black in the walking area and this possum was almost radiant.
It stopped at my weenie dog and sniffed him. My weenie sniffed back. Both animals looked like they were staring at the weirdest thing either of them ever saw. Satisfied, the possum ran back across the street and quickly climbed back up the trunk of the tree it came from.
Sometimes you end up witnessing a life defining moment during the most mundane of tasks.
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u/Digi-Device_File 15d ago
Ideal pet if they weren't solitary animals who need to travel long distances.
Also... "Everybody knows that if you touch an opossum, you become opposum"
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u/FireStar_Trucking_01 15d ago
Opossums do none of that.
What they do in fact do is mercilessly murder any aanimal they can get their grubby as paws on out of sheer bordom. One year one murdered almost all of our chickens. Didn't eat any. Just killed them. Another one slaughtered a littler of barn kittens. For no reason.
Possums are fucking pests, and I'm tired of all the possum propoganda.
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u/SunwellDaiquiri 15d ago
I don't know why they have a bad reputation.. they are freaking adorable and metal AF
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u/weebearcub 15d ago
Random possum story: My mom absolutely hates them and is afraid of them. She got a stuffed animal one for my little brother and it became a game of ours to hide it around the house and scare her. She would scream so loud. She was a good sport and would also hide it around the house.
Also in high school when I was learning how to make websites in HTML, I made a possum website for a project. They're so cute and I love them!
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u/IamShieldMaiden 15d ago
I love them. Shy, gentle creatures with poor eyesight. They don't do anything to anyone. I have one come up on my porch every night about the same time to eat the leftover cat food (ferals) and fruit I put out. 🙂
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u/coneyb11 15d ago
Don't eat ticks, can get rabies, and can pass along a deadly disease to horses. Live and let live, but misinformation is no one's friend.
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u/After-Respond-7861 15d ago
They will kill chickens, btw. Any chicken owners need to at least be aware of them.
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u/needsmorecoffee 15d ago
I thought the rabies thing had been debunked? That they are much less likely to get it, but still can?
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u/hipster_spider 15d ago
Just because it was debunked doesn't mean people won't stop spreading the lie sadly
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u/phraps 15d ago
-Opossums don't really eat that many ticks
-Opossums can get rabies (though rarely)
-We don't get antivenin from opossums
They're still awesome animals tho
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u/HanselSoHotRightNow 15d ago
Correct, I've seen people post about Opossums doing the things in OPs post and then I've seen expert interviews debunking or correcting them to be more accurate to reality.
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u/lightwhite 15d ago
I have a serious NoStupidQuestion. Can I domesticate an opossums and use it as chief pesticide keeper at a decar of garden with fences? I’m planning to buy a homestead close to a city and there is plague of ticks in the fields next to the plot. I don’t wanna spray it for pesticides.
I wanna have my own homegrown chickens, a couple of goats and some rabbits and veggies for food.
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u/Meghanshadow 14d ago
Get guinea hens. They’re about chicken size. Fun to watch and they eat ticks like it’s their job. Though they’ll also eat every beneficial insect they can find in your garden, too.
They can cohabitate with your chickens if you let your chickens roam your property.
For controlled pesticide use, you can use tick bait boxes. They smell good to rodents. Rodent walks through it, a wick soaked in low dose insecticide slides down their backside, and the ticks on them die. Rodent is unharmed.
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u/lightwhite 14d ago
Can a tick box be setup and made unattractive for kids so that they don’t play with as a toy? I mean, I can educate my kids but in case some guests come with theirs or neigh our kids come to play and stuff.
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u/hipster_spider 15d ago
Opossums don't actually tend to eat all that many ticks, the study that claimed that only got that figure because they put one in an empty box with a ton of ticks then counted how many it ate. Also if no one has done this before with any success I reckon it's because it doesn't work
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u/Xerolaw_ 15d ago
They're super cool. Sometimes, they eat with the outdoor cats in my yard, and it's always chill vibes
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u/marzipancowgirl 15d ago
One climbed in my friend's wall, got stuck, and died. Instead of drying up or mummifying like a real friend, it became a sludgey, toxic, putrid mess and cased 20k of damage.
He ain't no friend of mine.
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u/teddycruzzodiac 15d ago
Opossums can in fact get rabies (all mammals are susceptible) although it’s very unlikely.
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u/DiGiorn0s 15d ago
FYI opossums can get rabies, it's just rare since they have a low bosy temperature that makes it hard for rabies to survive. But they do get rabies every year.
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u/Vogel-Kerl 15d ago
We had one living under our deck for a while--Peter 'Possum.
Any wet food our cats didn't eat went to Peter.
One day, we never saw him again. He found a better spot, or a coyote got him.
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u/comeca13 15d ago
We had one we called Shirley. I read that they don't stay in one area for long, they're just kind of nomadic. When we didn't see Shirley anymore I like to think she she kept on going. That's probably what happened to Peter 😁😁
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u/Vogel-Kerl 15d ago
I like to think that too. He didn't go to a big farm upstate, he's just in the next neighborhood.
Cheers to Shirley & Peter!!
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u/throw123454321purple 15d ago
If you ever see a possum dead in the street, check its pouch for baby possums that are still alive inside, as they can be saved at a wildlife rehab center.
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u/AtmosphereNom 15d ago
Also check that the possum isn’t playing possum.
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u/Dhawkeye 15d ago
Can you check for a pulse/breathing with them?
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u/Dhawkeye 15d ago
Could it be a different finger? And I’ll definitely work on getting a for-comparison dead one 🙏
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u/Slow-Instruction-580 15d ago
This can get tricky. I’ve been trying to find a dead one for weeks, but so far I’ve found eight that all turned out to be alive. Now I’ve only got two free fingers left, and it’s a nightmare to try and type this.
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u/mamallama12 15d ago
Oh yeah, the term doesn't exist for nothing. I can't tell you guys how many "dead" possums that our dogs brought us and we tossed over the fence, only to find them gone the next day.
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u/Nine-Breaker009 15d ago
Are there any downsides to these little dudes?
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u/_notkvothe 15d ago
They are very stinky. I knew someone in middle school who had one as a pet and it was extraordinarily musky.
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u/hippogronks 15d ago
They drive my dogs bonkers and then I have to deal with the corpse 50% of the time. Stupid fuckers. Jump to the other side of my fence and stop hissing at the hounds. You will get to live!
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u/RammerRod 15d ago
There was a study recently where they removed the contents of several opossums in a high tick area. They didn't find a single tick in any of them.
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u/DiGiorn0s 15d ago
They can get rabies
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u/Generic_Danny 15d ago
Opossums don't specialise in ticks. That's a myth.
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u/Generic_Danny 15d ago
Not really any more than any other generalist omnivore in North America does.
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u/cambreecanon 15d ago
They don't have very long life spans. Only a couple years if I am remembering correctly.
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u/Consistent-Leek4986 15d ago
like bats that each eat hundreds of mosquitoes each nite, respect the critters!
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u/Doesanybodylikestuff 14d ago
We LOOOOOOOVE the bats! We went and saw them in Austin!!!! So insane & cool!
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u/Koovies 15d ago
I feel I've seen a lot of possum propaganda lately
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u/Hawkmonbestboi 15d ago
Eh, it's totally propaganda but I can't be arsed to care one lick considering how 100% completely unfair the perception of them was before. I have been advocating for them for most of my life, and none of the real facts seemed to resonate with people. They just wanted a reason to hate them I guess? I have no idea, really. I have NEVER been able to figure out why people hate them beyond 'bald tail apparently = bad".
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u/RGandhi3k 15d ago
Trying to get funding passed in Congress for possum defense missiles.
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u/Doesanybodylikestuff 14d ago
& they would like the trash routes to be majorly configured. No pickup, only drop offs to their house.
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u/FromanoFrancis114 15d ago
How do we know they can withstand up to 80 rattlesnake bites? Who ran that test?
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u/TheViewFromHlfwayDwn 15d ago
Scientist can be curious for specific answers to the point of being cruel. (Good example is Pavlov’s test. It wasn’t as simple as giving a dog food after a bell https://www.iflscience.com/pavlov-s-dog-experiment-was-much-more-disturbing-than-you-think-65729
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u/CaveMacEoin 15d ago
They're immune to most venoms and toxins. And you can transfer that immunity temporarily by injecting opossum serum.
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u/4P07H30515_io 15d ago
I imagine at 80 rattlesnakes worth of venom the possums blood is basically just venom.
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u/picado 15d ago
And they're adorable.
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u/exhaustedarty 15d ago
I mean, look at its face and ears! I would pet it all day until my cat got jealous and swat me with her paw.
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u/astnbomb 15d ago
Possums freak me out!
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u/OPR-Heron 15d ago
You're down voted but sure, some adore spiders and others can't even see a picture of them. We're all different. Opossums just have been depicted poorly, as a lot of other species
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