Nocturnal visitor

This cute little guy comes by our kitchen window for scraps every evening.

Not so cute if he is digging up your garden!

Grandma used to say the digging loosened the soil and he eats bad grubs and insects. Anyone know if the area has any other marsupials(sp)??

Apparently there are 113 marsupials in the Western Hemisphere. The Virginia opossum is found throughout Central America and North America east of the Rockies from Costa Rica to southern Ontario. There are water opossums somewhere in CA /SA. One website claims that in Mexico opossum tails are eaten as a folk remedy to improve fertility.

So, is Rob’s a Virginia possum?

This would explain why Rob's little friend is so obviously tail-less

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http://www.OneMansWonder.com

Don't know about other critters, but I do agree with your Grandma!

This would explain why Rob's little friend is so obviously tail-less

Ours are like yours, I think. No fear, just curiosity. In the evening they'll stroll on in the open patio door even though they see us sitting there. They'll sniff around and go back outside on their merry way. One day I was sitting on the couch in the family room and a baby or adolescent 'possum came out from behind the couch and looked like I had no right to be there. Lucky she was. A couple of years earlier we were cruising from the SF bay area to LA down I-5 around 3AM and struck up a conversation on our CB with a trucker from the south. He gave us a damn good sounding recipe for 'possum stew. Lucky for that little critter behind the couch she had big, dreamy eyes or she might have ended up in the stew pot.

Craig

We had one of those come into the Tarzan House at Laura's in Barra one night. My son still refers to it as our 'midnight burglar'!

According to the National Possum Society's website, an opossum "... uses its prehensile tail to stabilize position when climbing - it does not, however, hang by its tail." So who are you going to believe - the NPS or your lying eyes?

Incidentally, other websites state that the Virginia possum (sometimes called American possum but I prefer the Rebel possum) is the only marsupial in North America when they obviously mean the USA as there are other kinds of possums in Mexico. Virginia possums are considered an invasive specie in BC (though I prefer United Empire Loyalist Possum) although other possum-devoted websites state they are found east of the Rockies.

And we still do not have a answer to the question I posed: what kind of possum lives at Rob's - Rebel or other kind?

Oh here's more: the common opossum is sometimes divided into Virginian and Mexican. In southern Mexico there are several other types of possums including the wooly, the 4-eyed (doesn't look like one) and the water possum, which is a bigger possum and both sexes have a pouch (again doesn't look like one and they are aquatic).

The plural of opossum is opossums as it is not a Latin based word. A group of opossums is a posse.

And we still do not have a answer to the question I posed: what kind of possum lives at Rob's - Rebel or other kind?

It's known locally as a tlacuache, meaning it's been here long enough to have an Aztec name so I wouldn't consider it an invasive species, unlike that other invasive species we know as Hominus Europeus (aka Joe the Plumber et al).

And there is a Possum in the Persimmon Patch Picking Persimms and Putting them in his Pocket. Hint: Pronounce the "P" in all words beginning with a "P" with a spitting pucker sound.

Old child entertainment saying in the hills of the Ozarks.