You’re a NIGHT-RAT-BOY the size of ONE POINT FIVE CATS, you have mistooken up entirely the size your species is supposed to be, and your head is too much a circle at the back end and a point at the front part, like a drawing of an ice cream cone in a clown’s hand. I don’t care for that. Be a cat or be a rat but don’t be one of both. Or at least be a cat the size of a mouse if you’re going to do that.
You’re like the Joker of animals but not even an original Joker, you’re the Halloween guys who dressed up as Heath Ledger so much ten years ago, but you have real knives in your mouth??
Your body’s always wearing FINGERLESS GLOVES, you’ve got fur on your forearms and yet NAKED FINGERS
plus there’s your slithery nude little shit-tail; I hate it
People want to mix you up with the okay-looking thing what’s in Australia. I’m not talking about Australia, I’m talking about you. Why are you always waddling across my porch smiling like Templeton from Charlotte’s Web? I didn’t invite you over.
WHY DON’T I KNOW WHAT YOU EAT? QUICK TIME GUESS: WHAT DOES A POSSUM EAT. YOU HAVE NO IDEA, AND NEITHER DO I. IS IT FRUIT? IS IT…NIGHT DIRT? IS IT OTHER RATS?
you lack gravitas you assed hole
MY FULL ENTIRETY OF A REACTION TO YOU CAN BE SUMMED UP THUSLY AND FOLLOWING: SHAVEN’T, NOT AS IN SHAVE-ENT BUT RHYMES-WITH-HAVEN’T. SHAVEN’T. I SHAVEN’T YOU. SHAVEN’T. YOUR WHOLE ENDEALMENT, I DON’T PRIZE.
you clarve holes into the dirt and hide yourselves there, dirt is only to live in once you’re dead and you are angering Hades
YOUR TAIL IS FULL OF THOUGHTS AND INTENTIONS AND YOUR MOUTH IS FULL OF MURDER
your fur is like Muppet fur and I don’t appreciate it
your babies clutch up on your back like a nest of pest-pellets and they cratchle-scrabble onto your skin with their little fist-knives which is not how babies should behave, babies oughtn’t to grasple-snatch, human babies don’t permanently breast-feed with their teeth and nails, you little vampire tots
the sound I always feel like you are making when I happen upon your lurkment patch is “SKEHHHH” and I don’t want you around me ever
It is, in fact, all of them.
Possum appreciation collection for dissenters here.
This is literally one of my favorite gifs the internet has ever produced. Bless this lady and her drum possum.
And that’s just the first one I found! There are so many.
yesssss. I love this crazy possum lady so much.
ME TOO
TOO WITCHES
Looky at that cheerful grape chomping!
OMG what is this?
Here is her YouTube channel. I don’t think it can be described in words. At least, not by me.
I am having the complete destabilizing experience of not knowing whether someone is being serious or satirical. This possum lady is incredible.
I just clicked the link, and a video started on how to use a possum’s natural instincts to alert you of aliens. whaaaaaaa…..
Guess that answers what they eat.
yes good
(while I kinda get people’s GALGH reaction to possums I personally think they are v a cute)
POSSUMLETS
nyum nyum nyum nyum
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153…
We did it!
while I kinda get people’s GALGH reaction to possums I personally think they are v a cute
YEP
sometimes i get a cringey reaction to how they look, and yet i have a soft place in my heart for vermin, especially mostly harmless vermin. thx for the gifs as always.
I like rodents, so yes, I understand the vermin love.
I can keep from hating them, but they really do look completely wonky. They somehow look more rat-like than rats. They’re like giant cartoon rats.
They are – my rat-phobic boyfriend is Not A Possum Fan for that very reason.
Exactly! Real rats are cute little pointy bears with tails.
I shouldn’t be surprised you have a possum gif but I am.
c’mon you know that it happened because you are too witches for possumhaters.
also, I do not particularly care for rodents but definitely have a sweet spot for possums and their endearing wobbly selves.
And baby possums are impossibly cute.
ok I knew your gif game was strong but I didn’t know it was THIS strong!
~I’ve got my ticket for the long way round~
That made me laugh hot chocolate out my nose.
GENTLY BAP YOUR PASSAM!!
Favourite Tumblr gif right here, opossums are sweet innocent trash cats and deserve our respect and love.
I am constantly trying to rehabilitate the opossum brand. Only North American marsupial! Eats ticks! Doesn’t get rabies! Plays dead! Heart.
THANK YOU FOR THIS
I love this woman so much. She is who I want to be when I grow up.
Let me also recommend my own possum collection, here.
Looks like your HTML got borked, bb.
To see the perfection that is Elsajeni’s possum collection, go here!
OMG THAT TOO WITCHES POSSUM!!!!!
*is ded*
(or just playing … )
….smiling like Templeton from Charlotte’s Web
*dies screaming*
I loved Templeton. Also kinda had a thing Paul Lynde, tbh (my grandparents loved Hollywood Squares). Eight-year-old me really appreciated that level of snark.
Templeton made me deeply uncomfortable as a child, and as I grew older, I realized it’s because I *am* him a little. So now I love him?
“YOUR WHOLE ENDEALMENT, I DON’T PRIZE.”
My new go-to response for online dating, I think?
I might have to start online dating just so I can use it.
Same!
Actually just take the “possum” out of this whole thing and insert “dude on OKCupid” and you are right on.
The blistering realness of THAT.
This would make a great line in a hip-hop breakup song.
Night dirt! Yes, that feels very factual.
I am convinced possums are just anger rodents who scavenge on dreams
speaking as a possum, this is accurate. though I take offense at “just”.
In order to make it up to you, allow me to offer the dead/dying dream I had as a child of being a ballerina while never having to take ballet lessons.
I accept this offering. It is far more beautiful than the pile of trash I am currently napping in.
Aww like the Baku!
Not rodents at all. I will admit “anger marsupials” does not sound as good.
But, when I posted on twitter about my mother briefly having had a pet possum, Stephanie Beatriz faved it. So there.
#lifegoals. For realz.
Fun thing: possums are basically immune to disease, poison, and injury. My wife’s a wildlife vet, and she’s seen possums survive horrifying things that would kill any decent species twice over.
zombie possums
Possums are the jellyfish of the land, suspiciously resilient and prone to great increase.
Possums: the Rasputins of the animal world!
rah, rah, poss-pu-tin
nature’s toughest scrabbling fiend
Rasputin would make an okay name for a possum, now that you mention it.
The Rasputin of animals.
Yeah, there was one earlier this year in California that was hit by two crossbow bolts including one through the head, and it went into the vet totally alert and trying to remove the things itself! D:
Okay, but there is no way that one possum = 1.5 cats unless they have invented a cat that is lighter and more portable than the gigantic beastie that lives in my home.
Once, at the beach, a possum that was easily the size of two large cats clambered up onto our porch to eat a watermelon that we had left outside by the door. It was the most enormous possum I have ever seen. Bigger than the watermelon, for sure. By a lot.
My cat is zaftig (16 pounds) and the possum (sitting in a box) that I lifted was significantly lighter. He might have been equal to my old 7 pound cat but just barely.
Yes let’s discuss enormous cats, because I have one.
When your cat can comfortably lose 5 pounds, not being especially fat to begin with, and not being at all skinny to end with, your (my) cat is very big.
My roommate’s cat would be a big dude even if he weren’t fat, but also he is fat (he weighs somewhere around 18-20 pounds) (not trying to shame him – he is, to the extent I can tell as a civilian, perfectly healthy, but he is v. big). One time he fell asleep on my leg and my leg immediately also fell asleep.
I have often wondered what a person is called who is not a cat and is contemplating a cat: “a civilian.”
I think SarcasticFringehead may have been referring to self as a civilian speaking, rather than as a veterinary health expert.
I feel you. My cat is somewhere around 20-22 lbs and a small amount of that is probably that he’s a bit chubby, but he’s just a BIG cat. I have another average-sized cat and he is both taller and longer than her. I also have a small cat (8lbs) and his head is TWICE THE SIZE OF HER. He is but THREE TIMES her size and yeah.
My dear departed boy was part Maine Coon – he had the little tufties between his tosies and the ginormous size. His winter weight was generally about 30-33lbs, and after Beating Things Up season (aka Spring) he’d be toned and firmed down to his summer weight of 25-27lbs.
Standing on 4s he was over a foot and a half tall, but if he got up on his hind legs he was taller than most doorknobs – which he could open, regardless of type, with his baseball-mitt sized paws.
He’d walk around with me outside and people thought he was a dog until they got close.
He also beat up one or two dates I brought home. Defo the dude-screener of all time.
I still miss him every day, and it’s been 13yrs. Sniff.
Oh man, I’m hungover today (don’t ask) and your post made me MISTY. Our big cat is at least part Maine Coon, if not all. The tufties! The huge size! The being like a dog. I’m so sorry for your loss, and I know I will feel similarly when we inevitably lose our guy.
My cat is not like a cat. He is like a dog. Or some kind of strange third way of being an animal. He’s so loving and communicative and PRESENT. Where we are he wants to be. He inspects everything. He follows us everywhere, and talks to us. He sits on the toilet seat while my husband showers and lifeguards, singing him shower songs. He sits on the sink while we brush our teeth and I put on makeup, and smells and licks my makeup brushes. He sleeps on the bed, wherever he pleases, and we just have to make room for him.
He knows exactly what we are saying to him, and when he is being bad I just have to say his name and he will stalk haughtily off to his cat tree for a time out, on his own.
He also beats everyone up, which some people find disconcerting. Our little cat in particular could live without that trait.
YAS! to the present and loving and communicative thing.
I mean, no creature on EARTH can dis like a cat, and if he didn’t like you, either you didn’t exist or he’d make sure you knew to stay the fuck clear.
But if you were In, he was the sweetest thing ever. A good friend nicknamed him Mr. Love, and he would just melt in friend’s arms whenever they visited.
THAT is Quite a CAT, my word.
He sounds like the best cat ever
Thanks Toasties for the kind words. He was indeed a good guy and very special.
I call those tufties “toe-hawks”
I laughed through your whole description, but particularly identified with the third paragraph. My part-Norwegian Forest Cat was bouncy and destructive until I figured out he might like walking on a leash. My apartment neighbors are divided in three equal parts: those who just stare, those who mention I have a beautiful cat, and those who wonder what species my puppy is.
YES. I am so here for this one.
My possum story is this:
I’m still living at my parents’ house. Get home first and there’s a freshly dead possum with its head split open right at the entrance to the driveway. As in, it’s difficult to avoid hitting again when you turn in. No one else will be home for hours and it’s a nice summer day. In other words, I can’t just leave it or it will be 10 times worse later. Time to get my shit together and do something.
I get a scoop and a garden shovel. I go out to the road and try to maneuver the possum onto my scoop held in one hand with the shovel held in the other. This is fairly awkward but I eventually manage it. Then I carry this scoop of dead possum, muttering under my breath and trying so hard not to look at it, all the way back to the wooded area in back of the house where I finally deposit it.
It is still one of the grossest things I have ever dealt with. I hate possums, I hate roadkill, and I HAD TO DEAL WITH DISPOSAL OF A DEAD THING. <shudder> It was the split head that really did it…
I was so sure it was going to be alive and the reveal would scar us all.
haha! I don’t even want to think about it.
I was 10000% sure that it wasn’t dead.
I see now I failed to describe adequately the horror of the split head. Both why I could not bear to look at it and why it 100% was dead.
A+ suspense narrative, 10/10 would read again with equal trepidation, split head details or no.
I feel like the ONLY dead possums you do see are horrifically split, or mangled, or flattened. Everything else they can handle.
Me too!
As I was reading I kept waiting for it to wake up and try to eat your face.
oh, god, oh, god, oh, god, oh, god… I would not be here, i would be in a mental hospital still screaming…
I bike past loads of dead possums because my bike route is alongside (and even inside!) a national park/ecological preserve (I also see a lot of dead armadillos and alive vultures and sometimes gopher tortoises!) and legit the possums are the worst roadkill. I don’t even think the ones I find are roadkill exactly, but still, they’re awful. The armadillos are much more pleasant, if only because it’s cool to watch their carpaces bleach and then crack and disintegrate over the weeks.
damn it, why was I eating a banana when I read your comment?
glurgh…..
Here’s a riddle for you:
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To show the possum that it could be done.
Haha, well played sir! Apart from that, you lot are fairly weird! My favourite possum is that one Emry from Shameless
Australian possum, but I found one that had been split open at the abdomen and gutted by *something*. It was sort of decomposing so it took a while to work out if it was a possum or a cat.That said, ours don’t play dead.
I’ve had to bury my own fox-eaten mangled pets so roadkill would almost be a delight in comparison 🙁
Australian possums are a lot nicer looking than North American possums. The difference between a curious looking marsupial and an electrified Frankenstein cat with scary teeth.
I love this one even more than the raccoon. We used to find the same grumpy possum hanging out in my pool as a kid and I SHAVEN’T allow that ever again.
Once we thought my dog killed a baby possum, so we screamed at him to drop it. We then screamed because it got up and ran away because IT WAS PLAYING POSSUM. I’ve never been so upset/frightened at something being dead and then again at it being alive.
My dog proudly carried a curled-in-a-ball adult possum around the yard until we told him to drop it and called him in the house. After a few minutes the nasty thing S L O W L Y uncurled and S L O W L Y shambled away to hide under the porch. Then it stayed there all day, so we couldn’t let the dog out again or he’d just go worry at it. Ugh.
And you know that was his (the possum’s) specific intent all along.
A friend of mine had the exact same experience. And then the possum CAME BACK THE NEXT DAY, not having realized that there were dogs that would eat it if it returned to my friend’s yard.
My dog repeatedly “killed” the same possum until one morning I discovered that she had actually succeeded.
Real-dead possums are more terrible than fake-dead possums, simply because you’re the one who has to deal with the corpse.
I see your list of all that is wrong with opossums, and offer you this:
http://www.popville.com/2015/12/the-owner-promise…
i can’t decide if i want to laugh or just avoid shaw for the rest of my life
Sublime genius that makes me happy I don’t live in a country with possums. Although we have badgers with TB, so ya know.
I always imagine British TB badgers wearing frilly linen shirts, delicately, yet poignantly, coughing into lace handkerchiefs, in between composing romantic arias.
Haaa like the Romantic poets in Blackadder!
Alas I think they don’t actually get symptoms, they just infect cows before inevitably ending up as roadkill. So much glamour being a badger.
Nothing delicate about a badger, they are so MUSCULAR.
I always imagine them wielding large axes surrounded by their faithful hare soldiers, because I read too much Redwall as a kid. Eulalia!
between opossums and raccoons I don’t know because when I was a girl raccoons were the ones would stagger around the house pressing up their bellies and snouts against the low living room windows at night to catch moths against the glass but then again it was an opossum who tromped on the skylight until it fell through into the kitchen, and you don’t want an opossum in the kitchen when you are trying to make a pastry or even anything else.
That second picture. Look at that expression. Look at how much your words hurt, Mallory. That’s the face of a possum who’s just trying to get through life possumming, and now it just wants to crawl into a whole because who can love a possum?
Okay, but your red panda avatar is waaaaaaaay too close to being a possum avatar for me to think you are unbiased here…
It’s OK, possum! My sister will love you. She traumatized me once because she thought a possum was cute and didn’t know I thought it was scary…
I’m from Australia and I didn’t know possums had an evil US equivalent. Like, I did know you guys had your own kind of possums, but I assumed they would be relatively benign.
When you only have one native marsupial, you have to make it impressive…
I visited Australia when I was younger, and we stayed on Magnetic Island for a few days, in these cabins up in the trees. And your possums would just walk around and let you pet them? And come up into the cabins and look at you? And they were SO CUTE, I was so angry after at American opossums.
I just googled, and I never knew those things were possums. They’re more like chinchillas.
Yeah but one of them bit me a couple of years ago so still not 100% on board with my local possums.
Those American ones look terrifying though. What the hell America!?
Never forget that Taft tried to make “Billy Possums” a thing that would replace the Teddy Bear
I don’t want to eat that
Like, who the fuck would ever ever ever eat a possum? It’s a hellbeast.
No joke, the whole thing was based on a time that Taft was in the South and enjoyed a meal of “possum and taters”. Apparently they thought that could compete with a story of Teddy Roosevelt refusing to shoot a baby bear.
Yesterday I learned that Oneida silverware started as a free love commune, today I learn this. The Toast is a wonderful place.
Back it up–what’s this about the Oneida free love commune? How does that lead to silverware?!
My child, you have so much to learn
Oneida is one of my favorite bits of “well didn’t see that one coming” history.
I was so excited about this that I told all my friends and family on Facebook!
The Joy Of Cooking had recipes for opossum as late as ’75.
You can’t make me believe that anyone availed themselves of it, though. Not even in the Depression.
Well it suggest using rabbit recipes for opossum and I bet they’re easier to catch what with their natural response to danger being “stop running”.
“If possible, trap possum and feed on milk and cereals for a week before butchering.”
My JoC is falling apart and one time a squirrel peed in it (don’t ask), but I keep it specifically because it contains that possum tidbit.
I am delighted to learn that I am not the only fan of this section of the Joy of Cooking. There’s an event hosted by my university in which people dress as their favorite writers and read a passage out loud, and my cousin and I have seriously considered giving a performance in which I read the possum passage and she sits on stage and eats cereal.
THAT WOULD BE AMAZING
Indeed, you MUST!
I’m very fond of the squirrel illustrations…
Let me just go don my squirrel skinning boots brb
oh noooooooooooooooooooo
According to my dad, it’s the worst-tasting animal he’s eaten.
Billy’s revenge
Many people have eaten possum, including me. Not one of us has eaten possum by choice, though. It’s what’s for dinner if you’re (US) Southern, poor, and without any other critter in your rifle sights.
My Cajun grandma cooked and served whatever her sons brought home from hunting that day: possum, crow, nutria, squirrel, duck, snake (if very big, otherwise not worth the trouble). Cajun cooking usually tastes like cayenne and other spices. Mostly it cooks all day at low heat. Meat does not retain any identifying characteristics, is only a spice delivery system. I know I ate possum only after the fact.
“You want some more gumbo?”
“No ma’am. But it was very good. Thanks for cooking it.”
You sure you don’t want any more?”
“No ma’am, I’m sure.”
“Well then, do you know what you just ate?”
“Uh … no ma’am.”
“Baby, you just ate possum.”
Then Grandma would bust out laughing.
NUTRIA! They sold nutrias at the meat market when I lived in southern Russia. The scariest thing about them was that they were laid out skinned but they kept one paw on so you could tell you weren’t being sold a CAT. *shudder*
OMG! Nutria abound where I live in North Carolina. I cannot imagine eating one of those vile water-rat shit monsters unless I was literally near death from starvation.
WTF.
Uncle Sam has never been so… hirsute.
In a suit. With no shirt.
And those tiny shoes are fancier than anything I have ever owned.
This is… I mean… EAT. And fondle with glee.
For more background on this weird time in American toy history, please enjoy the excellent 99% Invisible episode on the Billy Possum
The scansion of this “poem” is hurting my brain.
“Even if we EAT him, he probably won’t poison us with his possum-y diseases, you guys, we swear!” whyyyyyy
“will we fondle with glee”
I know that language shifts, but dude. Even then someone should have thought twice about that line
Whoever wrote that was definitely teddy bearing all wrong.
Or teddy bearing all right, depending on your point of view.
Oh no, William Taft, oh no.
Fondling. With GLEE. *mad cackle*
Taft is my guy.
The unnecessary quotation marks in the poem are driving me up the wall, even more than the creepy ass patriotic possum.
One night, my friends and I were hanging out in our clubhouse (my garage) as you do. Suddenly, a HUGE rat looking thing came in and ran behind some lumber. We screamed and screamed, thinking that we were trapped in there with a raccoon-sized rat.
My mother came running out, thinking we were about to be murdered, and then had to explain to us about the poor quiet possum we’d just terrified.
NEVER FORGIVEN POSSUMS
Wow, talk about victim blaming, mom!
I have also had the “EEEEEEEEEE THAT’S THE BIGGEST RAT I’VE EVER SEEN” reaction to a possum. More than once, actually. Then again, I never figured out exactly what animal lurked in the parking lot under a bridge I used to park in (for work, when I was 17), but that’s probably for the best.
Possums sometimes get into fights with my dog, who is bigger than them but has less pointy teeth. They don’t even run when I spray them with a hose. I have to fill a huge pot with water and drench them.
Possums are horrifying rat-knives with ghost fur.
Also I think they fall to their deaths from a tree because I’ve found corpses on the patio that probably weren’t caused by my coward dog.
Apparently just last week my own cowardly dog had a confrontation with a possum in my parents’ backyard. Possum hissed and hissed from under the neighbor’s shed while Riley barked and barked until my father physically carried him inside. Of course, the only reason he (the dog) was so brave in the first place was because he was well aware that there was a fence between him and the threat. Later that evening he scared himself passing gas.
My dog is infuriated that we no longer let her outside past 10:30 pm, which is Possum Time in our yard.
I don’t mind when they’re traversing the fence rail or the electrical wire and all she can do is scrabble at the air whining, but when she does manage to corner one, and the hissing pointy-teething begins, no hose, no ‘dog behavior noise-emitter’ button, no obedience training, nothing will deter her from standing over it, barking like mad.
The ones closer to the house always play possum, which is no fun for her. She tried to goad them into fighting back, and they decline, so she’ll obey our commands to retreat, but sulk about it until they up and waddle away.
My Scotty dog used to dispatch possums with great alacrity. Even after he was blind and enfeebled, he could still snap a possum neck.
Is this series working through the Wheel of Exotic Pets? http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/whe…
If so, I would like to humbly request that otters be next, just to see if it’s possible for ANYthing to be wrong of otters.
(I suspect it is not.)
They sometimes capture baby seals and, uh, abuse them to death.
And then keep at it.
Also, my city had an aquarium with a big otter exhibit and it was in a room with parrots free flying over the ‘river portion’ where a good 8-10 otters scampered and swam. There were several incidents of the birds swooping too close to the water’s surface and the otters would reach out with their nimble hands….
And catch and eat the birds.
They no longer share an exhibit.
Otters are cunning and cruel, but dang are they cute.
Youtube once showed me a video of a bunch of zoo otters attacking a monkey that had been taunting them. They swarmed it and clung on with their teeth and tried to drag it under the water.
I respect all animals but have a deep, deep distrust of monkeys. Otters are up there on my favorite animals list (right there with raccoons) so this is just nature’s justice in action, in my opinion.
Oh golly, I used to be a zookeeper, and counted some otters among my charges. The ankle biting! The males and their diddling! The terrible fish breath! Fabulous beasts, those.
“The males and their diddling!”
wat
Well, you know, such clever little hands.
Wait, what’s the okay-looking Australian thing we’re talking about here? Is it a wombat? Because I kind of mix up possums and wombats and please, Toastiat, please make me feel like I’m not the only one……
Even if I AM the only one, we can all still make ourselves feel better by gazing upon this fine and chummy-looking specimen of wombathood…
Love me you wombat-sir, your whole endealment I prize, from your scronchent stubfingers to your otherwaysing peep buttons.
Tip-top, you good and kindly appreciatrix of all things gentleman-wombatly!
Fun fact of the day: Wombats poop in cubes!
(iirc, it has something to do with how tough their butts are, like, their butt-bone is moose-levels of strong. [I am not an expert on wombats, moose, or butt-bones])
… I just typed “wombat poop” into Google Images and don’t even really regret it.
Lol, I just looked into my butt-bone assertion, and that’s apparently wrong, it’s something to do with moisture content? So, don’t believe me about that part.
(but, their butts are still very strong, and they use them as a defence mechanism, so)
Frankly, I think I’m still going to espouse the “moose-levels of strong” explanation anyway…
They crush attackers with their butts!
i now know there’s an Etsy store where you can buy funny plushy poos and the animals they come from, including wombats.
There is also a charming poem about this and I can’t find it anywhere, but it’s about terrible noises at night and ends with “The wombat’s shat again!” It filled my 16 year old heart with glee while backpacking through Tasmaia, 10/10 would shout into Tasmanian wilderness again.
‘As you splash along the track,
Eyes alert and ears pinned back,
You may have seen those queer square turds,
And thought; if not expressed in words,
“The stress of such a defecation;
Baffles ones imagination.”
But it is not done to entertain us,
The wombat has an oblong anus.
So if your slumber is disturbed,
By cries and screams; don’t be perturbed,
Eyes tight shut, teeth grit in pain,
The wombat’s gone and shat again.’
Is this it?
Eeeeeee! What if it isn’t??? What if there are two poems that end in past tense statements about wombat poop???
YES! Ahhhhh, the sweet poetry of my youth, how I’ve longed for thee.
Is this the right place to talk about Digger the wombat engineer? Possibly? I love that no-nonsense bundle of fur and muscle.
The Australian possum and American possum at completely different species. Ours is okay looking but will live in your roof and make weird noises until you’re convinced you have a haunting
OH COOL. Hi, I’m terrible at biology, but I did just do a Google, and yours is, indeed, officially okay-looking. And I really am the only human who thinks “wombat” and “possum” sound like confusingly similar things…
Oh! Your possums are cute!! Why did we get stuck with the nightmare fuel version of possum?!
If I’m not mistaken we also got the nightmare fuel version of the badger, too.
And American ones are really called opossums. Australian ones are just straight up possums with no O at the beginning.
AND the Australian ones got their name because someone who had seen a North American opossum saw them and said “Hey that looks like an opossum!”
But obviously it was nicer-looking enough that they decided to drop the silent o.
(Having recently been to NZ, I will say that though Aussie possums are cute, they are also a shambling nasty pain in the arse that destroys the native NZ bird population that never bothered to learn not to live on the ground.)
Poor NZ birds!
Also, I have some nice soft gloves knitted with possum fur, which would be really weird if it was opossum fur, since they hardly have any.
I bought possum fur gloves for my sister when I was in NZ! they were super super soft. (now lost 🙁 alas)
I imagine opossum fur gloves would feel like steel wool. I hope never to find out if I’m right.
My aunt recently gave my son some possum fur socks from NZ, and it confused us mightily until we googled.
Yes! Which is why it is constant open-season on possums in New Zealand, which is why I own a lovely possum fur hat from when I visited there.
I am from NZ and despite living in Oz for 7 yrs I have not got over my visceral hatred of possums. The best use for possums is fur. They are goodfor that.
That sounds like a lazy-ass NZ bird population problem, not a possum problem. Get your shit together and learn to nest in trees, you good for nothing birds!
Yeah New Zealanders hate possums as fervently as Aussies hate foxes, cats and rabbits. Feral animals are bad, no matter how cute they are 🙁
When I was a kid I had a book with animal illustrations in it, and I realise now it was obviously American because it had this weird looking creature labelled “opossum” and I was like “the hell is this mum? That’s not a possum? I don’t understand!”
Australia has a possum called the ROCK-HAUNTING RINGTAIL POSSUM, this is absolutely a phrase Mallory would make up to creep me out with.
Also, there are many different species of Australian possum. For instance, the sugar glider is a type of possum.
Australia gives good possum even if they did live in my uncle’s roof that time and prompted him to run screaming around the house with a cricket bat at 2am in his underwear because he thought there was a burglar and traumatised my entire family
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWie9iJtaI4
(Also here is a running baby wombat to bring you joy http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Ba… )
Basically, I’ll never confuse a possum and a wombat ever again. AHHHH. I require a baby wombat sidekick for my 1920s stenographer-superhero adventures.
Australian possums are Ok looking but they’re extra annoying because they eat all of your vegetables and the tops of your trees and your flower buds, and make horrendous noises and thump on your roof. And there are so many of them & you’re not even officially allowed to relocate them. Listen to this one’s “delightful” call! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHulXzuc_9Y
As an Aussie who came here to defend our fairly-cute-but-scary-and-dangerous possum… fair enough. Your ones sound extra silly. And they don’t even have adorable marsupial pouches.
THEY DO HAVE MARSUPIAL POUCHES! I just don’t know if they’re adorable pouches or not.
not adorable.
They do, actually. They are the only North American marsupial. This is the most interesting fact about opossums.
Also they are the only marsupials whose territory is expanding.
They are also the mammal with the most teeth in North America! Interesting!
Oh wow I did not know that! I thought only Australia had marsupials – how did they get all the way over there???
Still, not as cute 😛
They invaded from South America when the isthmus formed. Way back before people went around decimating megafauna, South America sported even weirder marsupials than Australia does, along with sloths the size of Asian elephants.
You’re one mistaken (mistooken?) Sheila, Miz Elizabeth – these critters are, in fact, marsupials like yours are – complete with pouches.
(I’ll give you the fact that they’re not “adorable” pouches like ‘roos and wallabies have, but then again, wombats and drop-bears don’t have those either.)
POSSUMS IS NICE
YOU’RE DEEP IN WRONGMENT, POSSUMS IS SEX-SHRIEKING GARBAGE SLITHERINGS.
FUCK “sex-shrieking” just made me realize that I forgot to use the Wrong of Raccoons post comments to tell the tale of my apartment with a Raccoon Fuck Palace stairwell
dammit
Tell it here. We can wait.
I lived in this ratty old 100-year-old house converted into 4 apartments in college, as is p common I think. Every floor was a unit – basement, 1st, 2nd, attic – and an outside staircase that got increasingly narrow and terrible as it went higher was the only access to the further-up units (which was maybe not optimal in Michigan BUT WHATEVER). Anyway we lived on the 1st floor and were acquainted with the girls on the 2nd floor.
ANYWAY one night I am in the staircase-adjacent kitchen and someone bangs on my door. It is 2nd floor neighbor with 6 bags of groceries, extremely agitated. I NEED TO BORROW SOMETHING. A CHAIR OR A BROOM OR SOMETHING PROBABLY A CHAIR, she shrieks, and when I press for explanation because in what situation are a chair and broom interchangeable, the answer is: I CAN’T GET INTO MY APARTMENT BECAUSE THERE ARE ENORMOUS RACCOONS FUCKING ON MY LANDING. I lend her a folding chair; thumping and expletives ensue. She brings it back and informs me that the raccoons just took their activities to the next landing up. 5 minutes later I hear MORE thumping and expletives and some scratching-scrabbling as one of the attic-neighbors chases the still-fucking raccoons off HIS landing with a broom, down to the yard and into the night.
A few minutes later I heard some suspicious noises on MY landing. I had nowhere to get to (and a second entrance, which the other units didn’t) so I opted to let them be. But old roommate and I absolutely still refer to that place as “Raccoon Fuck Palace”.
The staircase on the right, as it were. Also I feel like this photo makes clear several other shortcomings of this particular apartment (not including the weird Google Maps glitch, this was just the angle with the best view of horrible staircase. That top landing is exactly as small as it looks; two large raccoons probably had it at capacity.)
oh kzo, never change <3
OH ONE MORE ADDITIONAL BIT OF CONTEXT FOR THAT HOUSE is that when I posted in the moths-and-general-insect-horror comments the other week about a mouse-sized house centipede disappearing into my pillow, that big window off the porch is THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED.
(a centipede in the room where it happened, room where it happened)
I’m fairly certain that isn’t a Google Maps glitch but a sign of some sort of spectral haunting or time/space displacement issue. or both.
This story was totally worth the wait.
This is the best story I have ever heard.
I used to live in an ancient house in Ann Arbor made into apartments like that! It had character and lovely windows, but all the floors sloped inward to the point where they were at least 20 degrees away from being perpendicular to the wall, so that was probably not 100% super safe
OH NOOOOOOOO
I really like ’em!
IS ANY TRASH ANIMAL GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE TOAST
Teacup piglets
those are like 90% not a real thing though they are just piglets and LIES (the lies are not their fault), they make me sad mostly because I feel like so often they get adopted by people because Cute and then abandoned because Oh Shit This Is A Whole Entire Pig
I would accept an article on everything that’s right of koalas. Or maybe pandas.
Foxes? I’m sure people have reasons for hating foxes though. Especially those who own chickens and whatnot.
Red pandas are precious. I do love them.
It’s like if Lewis Carroll was the one who took all the LSD. I love it.
This is exactly what I thought. Exactly.
“High” five 😀
But, but, but https://www.facebook.com/evan.antin/videos/464334…
Scariest/weirdest moment of my life: one balmy summer night, I had the main door open but the screen door closed. Little Black Cat was standing at the screen, making “hello!” chirps. “Oh,” I said, “is there another porch cat out there? Is that the fuzzy gray rise of a kitty-back I see?”
No. It was a fucking possum.
I live in the city, I can handle rats, I can handle mice, I can handle the variety of mangy cats who live on our porch but do nothing about the rats or mice and are freeloaders generally. But this was a possum. I freaked out. It lived in our basement ceiling for like a month, until our landlord finally brought it someone to catch it. It was hauled out in a cage, hissing out its possum-y evil.
Something similar happened to me – I was on my way to view an apartment in Vancouver (this was in winter, so it was already dark) and heard a rustling in the bushes. Thinking it’s a cat (and being a crazy cat lady who has to greet ALL THE KITTIES), I stop to look and out comes a skunk. It seemed friendly, but I was not taking any chances and scooted as calmly away as I could.
Possums are doing their level best with the gifts God hath given them, and who among us can say the same?
I am reminded of the various stories in various Christian countries about the involvement of the Devil in the contemporary form of some animal or other, never mind that that would stand in clear contravention of the whole Genesis thing… And one can only imagine it stemming from a dubiousness: “God did that one? No, I don’t think so.”
So the religious version of “go home, evolution, you’re drunk.”
Me. Thank you.
Possums could definitely do with some better grooming, that is certain.
Possums look like Alec Baldwin when him and Geena Davis are trying to figure out their scary faces in Beetlejuice and I just will not have that. Nope. Nope. Nope.
I’m not sure why but I was initially certain that this was from an old TMBG music video.
THAT WAS ALEC BALDWIN???
it may take me a bit to recover from this
“you lack gravitas you assed hole”
Well, it’s going to be impossible not to use this in some sort of business communication today.
It will take the better part of the rest of my day deciding who I will anoint with this instant classic of a phrase. It’s magnificent. It reminds me of “2001: A Space Odyssey”:
My god, it’s full of stars
If I ever have to online date this is how I will respond to every neg, I do solemnly swear.
fighting the urge to use it as a comment on my students’ papers tbqh
I wonder how long it would take for the Iain M Banks injokes to start.
Lookit. Mallory CAN be wrong.
I thought it was impossible-ossible-ossible.
I always read the articles first before commenting but NOT THIS TIME.
Im-possumble, even.
is that your idio-idio-idiosyncracy?
I just love to talk like Templeton the Rat on every possible occasion involving rattish animals. (Yes, yes, marsupials, I know. But they are brothers of the tail.)
“you lack gravitas you assed hole”
i am fucking dying
This is the animal hatred post I have been waiting for my whole life.
My college roommate knew how much I hated possums and bought a stuffed animal possum sold at Cracker Barrel (the greatest of the fine establishment’s crimes). She then proceeded to hide it in various locations for the next several months: the trunk of my car, in my backpack, under the covers in my bed. You’d think it wouldn’t be creepy because it was just a stuffed animal, but it had the right ” ONE POINT FIVE CATS” size and “slithery nude little shit-tail” and was horrifying. EVERY. TIME.
My first job out of college, I seized upon the Christmas white elephant gift exchange as they ideal opportunity to get rid of it once and for all. It was the prized/most-stolen gift, and I rejoiced that it had at last benefited me in social capital, the dastardly thing.
A week later, I yelped in horror as I rounded the corner in the coat closet, to find it hanging there from its little shit-tail, and realized that I had inflicted it upon myself in a whole new context.
And that is my possum story.
Possums: they’re horrifying even when stuffed animals.
I was very confused by this comment because “stuffed animal” here tends to mean “taxidermied animal” and for a minute I thought that your horrifying roommate had gotten a taxidermied possum with glass eyes and everything and put it in various places for you to find. Then I worked out that you were talking about a soft toy. Well at least your roommate isn’t full Norman Bates, that’s something.
Also THEY EAT A MILLION BILLION TICKS
Mallory is gonna get Lyme disease cuz she chased away the possums. Unfortunately, Karma bites.
i just don’t understand how this is not a universal feeling i mean look at those fangs
like at least raccoons are manipulative enough to look cute sometimes but yeesh.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153…
Unambiguously cute.
Opossums, like many americans, can’t afford cosmetic dentistry.
But the fangs are in the goofiest, most unassuming smile the animal kingdom has to offer!
i — what? were the possom pictures you scrolled by significantly different than the ones on my screen???
One time we were about to have an overnight freeze and i went out in the dark to grab my big potted aloe plant, and when I got on my porch I looked down and there was a possum in it, not inches from my face. Screamed, dropped aloe, ran inside. Possum was very calm.
Possums are v relatable, for example, this sentence from their wiki page: “If threatened, the baby will open its mouth and quietly hiss until the threat is gone.”
Muchly truth. I used to walk past this box a kindly gentleman had put out with a hole in the side and cat food inside for strays. It had a lid you could lift up and every time I walked by I would check and see if there were any kit cats I had not yet befriended. Until once I opened it and there was the tiniest opossum, munch munch munching on cat snacks. It swiveled its head around 90 degrees to look up at me and hissssssssssed.
Then a cat came gallumping across the road as fast as cats can and snatched that little baby out of the box and I felt very sad.
Ohhhh, I’m sure the cat thought it was her kitten, that’s all, I refuse to believe any differently and don’t you tell me any further contradiction of the anecdote. I saw it disproved on Snopes, whatever you’re going to say.
Cats are murder beasts, mine just left a baby bunny head, one foot, and a fluffy cotton tail on my porch. They are not to be trusted and I don’t know why I keep feeding mine when she’s eating all the adorable younglings in the area? I still wonder what she did with the other three feet. Did she get full before she ate the fourth foot?
I will not post the picture but I’m keeping it on my phone because it’s such a great way to get out of terrible conversations. “Oh yeah, that’s real cool, can I show you this picture I have of a baby bunny’s head? Oh, no, you have somewhere else to be all of a sudden? So sorry, goodbye forever”
Too bunny, I’m too decapitated bunny to keep talking, sorry ~
My boyfriend and I were walking through Target obliviously chatting about the rabbit corpse I assume some neighborhood cat left in my garage, and when he exclaimed “Oh, it looks like it already ate the heart!” while looking at the picture I’d taken, I rather abruptly noticed several other shoppers edging away from us, visibly concerned. Oops.
My mother: I think your chickens are eating a bird!
I went outside, only to find that my chickens were pecking at a dead chicken’s *head*. That had been dropped by a fox, presumably. I picked it up with a trowel and buried it.
I don’t have a picture of it because that was 2005, pre-easily accessible camera, but that would have performed a similar function. Plus the added cannibalism factor!
My parents’ cat caught a baby rabbit once, but didn’t finish the job, so my brother had to do it. With a rock. The same weekend he had his first car accident.
Is it…is it possible that your brother is the main character in an eerie piece of midcentury fiction? And is he ok?
It was several years ago. I think he’s recovered by now. But yeah, my baby brother has had an excessive number of wildlife encounters. He also got bitten by a goose when he was about 6.
So now I think about it, the eerie midcentury fiction thing is possible. I’ll have to ask him if he or his wife have noticed any inexplicable noises in their home.
Having recently followed a possum pic aggregator page on fb, and being convinced of their general virtues of character and cuteness, it seems like you’re on the wrong side of history this time. As a rat owner I can say that you get over the weird hairless tails pretty quickly.
I mean, talk about punching down, sheesh.
as a rat owner kindly get the hell off of my website
Wait you have rats too? :3
My family used to keep rats, but only as food for the snakes. I kept my distance from the whole process but I assume the snakes were fed to a proportionally more horrifying creature and so on, until at midnight on Midsummer’s-Eve the ghoulskitters were fed to the Dark Patience and a bountiful harvest was ensured
Pics?? Pet rats are so adorable! I’d have a few of my own if I weren’t certain my cat would eat them.
My most recent possum story: my spouse and I were about to leave for his parents and I was like, hey, take the garbage out, and for whatever reason, he put it by the back door landing with the idea that he would take it all the way to the alley when we got home? So naturally, we came home, there’s garbage everywhere (we live in a city: scavengers abound), we clean it up with much muttering and aspersions and blame. A couple hours after THAT, I open up the back door to find a fat little old possum toddling up the steps to look for more garbage. I shrieked (despite my general pro-possum stance) and it TOOK OFF back down the stairs and I haven’t seen it since. Sorry possum-guy. That was a real bait-and-switch.
thank you, thank you, can we request an everything what’s wrong with squirrels next? THANK YOU.
I think Dad Magazine already covered that.
NO NEVER NEVER
Squirrels are the only wild animal of this size that I actually think are cute and endearing.
(To be clear, that’s when they’re hanging upside down from bird feeders and scurrying up trees, not the horrifyingly rude city/campus squirrel that’s so acclimated to people they would practically jump in your lap to get your food or whatever. I’m sure you all have stories!)
I saw a squirrel fall out of a tree once. It looked so horribly confused, the poor thing.
THEY ARE JUST RATS WHAT HAVE ELABORATE SWOOSH-TAILS (I like both critters but it is facts)
Specifically NYC squirrels who are the worst squirrels and are probably part subway-rat and put their little squirrel hands on your leg and steal garlic knots out of your lap.
THE CANNIBALISM, for one
OH MY GOD I SAW A SQUIRREL EAT ANOTHER SQUIRREL THIS WEEKEND AND IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST TRAUMATIZING EXPERIENCES OF MY LIFE. I didn’t even know they did that before I witnessed it and it was HORRIBLE.
WHAAAAATTTTTT?????? NO, no, no, <backs away and then runs>
(*very quietly*): Hisssssssss…
I would like this and I would also like for it to be a guest post written by Tracy Clayton.
EVERYTHING.
A squirrel the size of a kitten strolled by my back door yesterday. I’m pretty indifferent to squirrels most of the time, but I’m really not okay with one so big that I thought it was another visiting cat.
THEY ARE THE WORST I HATE THEM.
Truestory: When I was in college I had to walk past a line of oak trees planted in the breezeway and those bushy-tailed fuckers would chitter away and throw acorns at me. I do not tell my dog not to chase the squirrels. I let her at it, and hope that one day she’s able to work up enough speed over the distance (she is very fast but takes a while to reach top speed) to catch one.
They eat my tomatoes, they are devil-beasts masquerading as cuteness but those are lies. They will steal your food and then drag your neighbor’s garbage into your yard so that it is full of week-old tortillas. They will try to get into your house while holding chocolate chip cookies in their nasty mouths, smearing chocolate all over your windows. They will taunt your cats and dogs and then escape into the trees. I hate them, more than raccoons and opossums combined, and I have been traumatized by all three.
People throw away chocolate chip cookies?
Can we have one about the dreaded capybara, please? The one animal the mere thought of which makes a frisson go through me like you wouldn’t believe, with its tiny little feet, humongous ass and a creepy, creepy walk (they have it on the Uruguayan two-peso coin. Lovely, very forward-thinking but apparently deeply disturbed people, they are).
<img src=”http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/1252819/monkey-punches-capybara-o.gif”
(Hope the gif works at last… http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/1252819/monkey-p…
Double fail 🙁
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/1252819/monkey-p…
you’re just missing your last >
Aw, it just sorta bloops to the side and stays there like playdoh
Capybaras are ADORABLE and we Uruguayans are entirely in our right minds, thank you very much
You’re only half right. And half very, VERY wrong! At least I didn’t see any roaming the streets of Montevideo, as opposed to those of Rio (unless those were REALLY huge mother-friggin rats. In which case I’m lucky to be alive!)
I met one once! His name is Dobby and he does tricks for corn.
Also the best thing about capybaras is that since people in parts of South America eat so much capybara meat, an old-timey pope declared them to be a fish so Catholics could eat them during lent.
I thought it was the beaver.
https://youtu.be/tG_sOM7bi58?t=1m14s
Ha! Turns out they mentioned it on QI, as well, which is where I learnt about beavers, no idea how I’ve missed it. Must’ve seen it in happier times, when I had no idea what unspeakable horrors ambled all over South America 😉 Besides me, that is :/
But capybaras are great. They have such gravitas!
Blasphemy! How could anyone fail to adore these majestic giant guinea pigs? Capybaras are full of wisdom and pure of heart and I will hear no word against them.
Girl, I’m sorry but you are very much alone on this one. Cabybaras are the loveliest creatures. We humans should be thanking mother nature DAILY that we’re allowed to exist on the same planet as those noble animals.
This gif has 100% endeared capybaras to me, sorry.
Capybaras are literally manatees who walk among us. How could you not love them?
No capybaras are wonderful and I SHANT hear otherwise.
I have decided that all male possums are named Morton and all female possums Mortensia. Such stammering and ineffectual little deathlings, they are.
deathlings!! <3
My two possum stories, both from when I lived at my parents’ house out in the country:
1) There was a female possum who lived in the wellhouse, which had a wire fence around it because we used to have a dog and that was where we penned it at times. The gate had long since fallen in, and there was a hole in the fence near the bottom that had rusted out. The possum got in and out through that hole, because her vision was so bad that she never saw the fallen gate. My parents used to throw some of their leftovers and scraps off the back porch to feed various animals that came through, and I watched this poor possum pick up half a baguette and try to fit both it and her through the hole in the fence for ten minutes. It never occurred to her to turn it sideways, and she kept bashing it against the fence crossways, until I went inside because I felt bad for her.
2) The same female possum would come up on the back porch at twilight to catch and eat bugs. One evening I watched her through the window on the door–she had a pouch full of babies who all wanted to come out and play and she kept having to stop and stuff them back in. It was darling, and everyone who’s been exasperated with a willful toddler would empathize with her at that moment.
I can’t even describe my expression at the idea of mama possum stuffing her rambunctious babies into her pouch. OMG.
I have had the revelation that my toddler is actually a possum.
It is the only way I could possibly be this tired today.
Cons:
THEY SCRUMBLE WALK THROUGH LEAVES IN THE BACKYARD SO AS YOU WILL THINK YOU ARE BEING SPIED BY EVIL TINY BADMEN AT NIGHT
AND HANG FROM TREES LIKE RATSLOTHS
AND DIE IN WINDOW WELLS
Pros:
but they eat the ticks and aren’t rabid so, y’know, that’s chill
ALSO LET US NOT FORGET THE FAKE-DYING STINK JUICE FROM POSSUMBOTTOMS
One time I heard a noise in the cabinet under the sink (in my second story apartment) and noticed my cats staring at it, so I opened the door and found a tiny baby opossum! It had climbed up the outside of the pipes all the way from under the house. I caught it and let it go outside. Then a couple hours later I heard another noise and there was a second one! I caught him and let him go outside too. It was a weird experience but they were cute.
Also I follow this animal rescue group, and they get people to knit or crochet little nests for the orphaned baby animals that look so cute. Like this.
I would totally knit those little beebees a cosy hat-nest.
Do it! There’s probably a rescue group near you too! They just have to be really tightly knit/crocheted so the tiny paws and claws don’t get tangled up in loose holes.
http://wildliferescuenests.weebly.com/patterns.ht…
And if you don’t know a local group that needs them, you can send them to the group I follow, CLAWS. https://www.facebook.com/ClawsNC/posts/1015402756…
Those are some cute cute cute babies, there.
They were! I think the adults look ugly, like R.O.U.S.es of The Princess Bride, but the babies are cute and kittenish. Spotty ears, happy tails! And they were too young to be scared. This one sniffed my finger in curiosity. But I didn’t want to make friends with him, because I want my sink to myself.
PPS Never pick up an opossum by the tail. Some people think that’s the right way to do it, but it can actually hurt them. They can hang by their tail if they want to, but it’s not good to pick them up that way. (Probably like picking up a baby by its arm.)
ohhhhh bb
oh NO that second one looks so Concerned with its little splotch-ears aw bb
I was going to post a pic of that kind of possum, the only ones I know (native around here and all).
I always found them kinda adorable, even if they look like an apparition if you’re taking the thrash out really late in the evening, even if one of them fought and traumatized my beloved tortie cat (she had this “I’ll never go mousing again I swear” look in her face while I took her to the vet) (she did went mousing again, but it took a while).
Possums eat RATTLESNAKES, Mallory! And other horrors!
Unlike the mongoose, which counts on being very fast, opossums are largely immune to snake venom.
This is partly because good ole’ American venom is less toxic than Indian snake venom.
“you lack gravitas you assed hole”
BRB, updating various email signatures with this.
Yep.
Possums are magnificent. The wildlife center has one named Penelope. I got to hold her at one outreach event for several hours, and she burrowed her face in my arm to sleep, and all was right with the world.
I am interested in seeing if this series gradually progresses through creepier and creepier animals (by general public perception). If so, I’m going to be one of those people going “no, guys, they’re adorable, really, I don’t know what you mean” until the bitter end.
I am waiting for the kittens episode, see how devoted the cult really is…
I would be intrigued to see what comes after the opossum on the creepy scale. I mean, I think they’re cute but I can see how they’re objectively unsettling. The only creatures I can think of to out-creepy them would be like, spiders and deep-sea fish.
Armadillos. I just can’t. They are cat-sized rat-lizard-crustaceans and their pointy scampering feet just gross me right the fuck out. And there are kinds that have both armored shell AND fur and it is just not OK at all? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_fairy_armadill…
Oh but it’s literally called a pink fairy!!! And it looks like a guinea pig wearing armour! It’s clearly the valiant steed upon which an imp will ride into battle.
I didn’t know that existed. It’s fantastic and I love it.
What if the bitter end is naked mole-rats?
Just how committed are you to this thing?
My own true possum story: in college, I lived in a house without AC, and to get adequate ventilation we’d prop the front and back doors open, and usually leave our individual room doors open as well. So, I’m doing homework, and have my glasses off; I hear a noise, and look up to see what I assumed was the mother of all rats crawling under my bed. I grab a flashlight and look under the bed to see a big naked pink tail hanging down from the boxsprings. I inform my roommates, who I then have to dissuade from trying to kill the thing (because they’re guys) until we can coax it into a box and let it go out in the countryside. Had no idea why the possum wanted to hide out in my bed, though.
NOOOOOOO.
Maybe all the possum wanted to do was whisper secrets of the future to me while I was sleeping. I would have woken up feeling not only surprisingly well-rested, but oddly sure that I did not want to be a resident assistant my last year, but to continue living off campus and get a job that I’d still have come graduation. Oh, well, water under the ol’ bridge!
Opossum females have two uteri and two vaginas: this is because the uterus situation of other mammals is complicated beyond what I thought. (Being a mammal is a new thing, we’re still workshopping the genital situation.)
So the males have a tiny forked penis, like a lizard or a snake. (One fork per vagina) However, early Europeans looked at the forked penis, they looked at those nostrils, and they were like “Clearly the male inseminates the nose, and the female sneezes tiny embryos into her pouch: behold how she sticks her nose into her pouch just before becoming pregnant.” (She was probably licking her swollen nipples to sooth them.)
Imagine a world where you know enough about opossums to observe their tiny forked penis, and their bee-sized embryos, but not their two uteri. This is a fascinating failure of observation.
Mammal reproductive systems in general are some of the best evidence against intelligent design. So much of that stuff would never have cleared beta testing.
If it were software design, though, I’d believe it in a heartbeat. There’s always some Craig with “his way” of doing things and then you get rushed to finish something and Craig decides to dig in his heels, and ugh, fine, Craig, you can fork the penis this time, as long as it passes the integration tests with the circulatory system.
Craig was one the squamate team and the marsupial team, but when they were doing the placental mammals he was moved to another project.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-evolutionary-be…
I mean whoever did the placental mammals still said “fuck it” and left their hacky work-arounds in place for people, though.
The hemichlorial placenta is probably also Craig’s work, tbf, and then whoever ended up fixing his disasterpiece of a reproductive system was like “they’ll die if they have to fit the brain specs through the pelvis required by the motility specs? can we just make the brain develop after birth? Craig was talking about how he did basically external embryos on his last project, it’ll be fine” and then didn’t realize a pouch was required for that code to function.
Can they do suspended animation embryos, like kangaroos?
I don’t think so? They have a very rapid estrus cycle, but that might be an adaptation to people who don’t take the trash all the way to the dumpster.
i just lost it right here at my desk.
I don’t think there’s much pressure for that adaptation for possums. They live in a food-rich environment instead of a desert, they have large litters instead of only one, and they breed rapidly. If they lose a batch of young, there’s another batch on the way pretty soon.
I was just going to post
BIFURCATED PENII
but yours is better.
Stick it up her nose!
Sent from my iPhone
“Sent from my iPhone” is killing me for some reason.
There’s an app for that!
Once an Australian possum dropped out of a tree, onto my shoulder, bit down my arm to get to my sandwich. They may be cuter, but they are not nicer and deserve the same amount of disdain an those rat-faced American versions.
Okay but, the thing where they “play dead.” It’s not a voluntary response. When frightened they just keel the fuck over and go into “a coma-like state” that may last up to an hour. I don’t have it in me to dislike an animal that faints under stress like it’s the protagonist of a 19th-century novel.
I do not believe possums do anything by accident
I would like to think that part of the deep-law of animals is that anytime a fainting goat and a opossum meet they buy each other a round.
Armadillos have a similar situation, where they seize up and leap into the air! Which is pretty good at dissuading approaching bobcats but not great with cars.
Okay, this is my favorite fact I have learned today. Maybe possums will be less terrifying if I imagine them in Victorian gowns.
May I submit a work of poetry(ish) that I wrote for the amusement of my friends some years ago?
O Fugly ‘Possum
(An ode to my complicated relationship with the Opossum)
O Fugly ‘Possum with only one eye, why do you stare through our window?
It was far bad enough when you had both eyes in, but without one you’re kind of a freak show.
O Fugly ‘Possum in front of my car – why are you such a random darter?
Your survival skills suck, you weird rat-tailed thing, why make yourself into a martyr?
O Fugly ‘Possum in my trash corral, are you trying to scare me to death?
I was just taking trash out to where it belongs – don’t mind me, just catching my breath.
O Fugly ‘Possum killed by a car, your reek makes my knees feel all rubbery.
I’m sorry you died, that you were run down in your prime – now excuse me while I harf in this shrubbery.
O Fugly ‘Possum, I remember you’re there, and I choose to take another sidewalk.
How was I to know that your cousin had died, and his body would be there on that block!
O Fugly ‘Possum, I begin to suspect that I’ve angered your god or ancestor
Why else would you be wherever I am, just watching and waiting to pester?
For the first time in my life, I wish I’d written something that was not first written by Dorothy Sayers.
Marvelous and wondrous are you.
Thanks! 🙂
I’m crying!
Possums look like something Breughel could have trademarked.
Surprised nobody’s noted so far as a further datapoint that Pogo Possum is distinctly non-possum-like in looks (except in some very early comics, but Walt Kelly quickly got away from that, correctly I think).
He’s also non-possum-like in other ways; I seem to remember that he once tried to hang by his tail from a branch and ended up falling on his head.
rodents of unusual size? I don’t believe they exist.
The worstest thing about possums is that they have forked penises. Once, at a children’s museum in North Carolina I saw the terrible possum beastie in it’s cage licking it’s forked possum penis and better I would rather die in a fire than ever have to see such a sight again.
Ok so then what is the appropriate response when someone sneaks up & startles you? It’s skehhh. The only response is skehhhh.
SKEHHH!
And fingerless gloves are cool
This is EXTREMELY relevant to my interests.
When i was a young, intrepid reporter on my college newspaper staff, I came home to my dorm to see four or five police cars surrounding our dorm. I realized there was some BREAKING NEWS happening and quickly e-mailed my editors, who told me to get in touch with Public Safety and find out what was going on. I called Public Safety to ask what it was that was up, and her response was all “Mind your own business,” so I KNEW something must’ve been afoot.
I returned to the site to investigate further, and indeed, something WAS afoot– or should I say, fixed in place? A possum had seated itself at the basement entrance of our dorm, and refused to move. I did a FULL write-up, including getting statements from the students milling about and watching the scene unfold (“There was a possum. It didn’t move.”) The next morning, I got the statement from the head of Public Safety, who assured me that “no one was hurt or challenged by the animal.”
It was the best story I’ve ever written. The Philly Inquirer had sent a reporter to do a semester-long residency at our school, and when he gave his end-of-semester speech to talk about WHAT HE HAD LEARNED, he mentioned my possum story as his favorite all year.
A+ story
I once got to do a story on rabies because I found a dead bat on campus!
Campus Wildlife Correspondent Walrathem
I tried to make it happen! They wouldn’t let me do my report on the fish in the creek. However, in my preliminary reporting for that article, I did learn that the correct term for the ichthy-type animals in a body of water if there is more than one species is “fishes” and not merely “fish.”
I also tried to do an article on earthquakes in the area but everyone on the paper kept saying “oh we don’t have earthquakes here” and then of course they had one a couple years after I left. My smugness was immense.
Counterpoint: female opossums have thirteen nipples, arranged in a circle of twelve with one in the middle, which we can all agree is the perfect number and arrangement of nipples.
NO, we can NOT ALL AGREE ABOUT THAT. O_O
This is such an odd number and arrangement though. Why, evolution? In case Arcane Nipple Rituals are necessitated?
į̥̞̯͙̩n͔̘̦̙ͅ ̡̭͖̫d̰̫ͅa͓͖͔͍r̞͞k͙̤̫̞ ͖͇͎̯o҉͙͖̝̠̖̰f̧̯͕͉̟̱̝ ̺̦̙̪͔n̟i̙̭̗ǵ͉h̯̝̱̺̣t,̫͍̣̱̘͜ ̢͍i̴̞̮̖͉n͓͔̝͕̥ ̸̲̳̲͚̗̪͎s̶̫̦̼͙̦h̀a̪̺̣ḏ̷̮͖̲̭̬ͅe͓̹̯̠̩̣̟ ̱̮̤͙̻̪o̱͚̰̘̫͔f҉͈̖ ̳̹̘t̲̜̭r̢͚̪͚̪͖̟ȩ̣̮̯͖e
͓̫̯͇̤̖̲s͍̮̦̼͚tr̺̝͕̮̮͘ọ͖̜̤k̶̺̼̟͓̱̹e̞̜͍̬̟ ͙̞̻̪̦̦͚͟y̘̹̯̞͎͎e ̗̳̦̞͙̼̘́ni̧̫̳̻͓p҉p͏͎̲̭̟͚̰l̠͚e̡̱̝͕̦͔͉̱s̻̜̬̘̩̬͍,̭̞ ̨̬t̪͓̤̯̤̭e̙̬͚͈̭ṋ̥ ̲̳̮ą̹̘̪̖̰̙n̮̠̤̦̙̖ͅd̜̩ ̬̣̮͔͔̜̥͟t̛͈̹h̷̭̟r̻̥̗͓͓̲e̼͕̺ę͖̭̺̝
The only reason a creature would need that many nipples is to have far too many horrible offspring!
They have more than thirteen per litter usually, just the ones who are last to the teat starve 🙁
13 nipples is totes witches, though.
I shared my latest possum friend on the anit-raccoon-propaganda page so here is another possum friend
His name was Barry Manilow and he used to visit my cat every night (they’d stare at each other through the window) and then I found him living in a box in my outside storage closet. I carried Barry in the box out to a wooded area near my apartment.
HhhhhhNO. He is SLY and WINKSOME and FULL OF LECH-TEETH. Gross, possum, no points.
HI BARRY! I like him.
you clarve holes into the dirt and hide yourselves there, dirt is only to live in once you’re dead and you are angering Hades
I guess that lets out moles as well. And moles are kind of adorable (with the exception of star-nosed moles, which are eldritch horrors straight out of H.P. Lovecraft). “Clarve holes in the dirt” is possibly my favorite phrase in this piece, along with “cratchle-scrabble.”
True possum story: when I was a kid we had an enclosed back porch behind our house, with a trapdoor going down into a crawl space. It was entirely possible for creatures to get into the crawl space from outside and hence into the porch if the trapdoor was open. We learned this with one or two neighborhood stray cats, but also on The Night The Possum Came To Visit And Wouldn’t Leave For Hours.
Ze Frank’s True Facts About the Star-Nosed Mole.
NOPE
Then there is this horrifying hidden secret from the nether regions: the man possum has a two pronged penis like a pickle fork for stabbing into the lady possum and her double hooha. http://opossumsocietyus.org/general-opossum-infor…
“It was believed that the shape of the penis was a perfect fit for the female opossum’s nose.”
Well that just makes sense.
I came here specifically to post this. Great minds, etc.
Pro: the baby ones are sort of cute.
Con: they are constantly getting hit by cars but they are larger and grosser than most things that become roadkill in an urban area, so you end up steering your dog away from the 15-pound carcass that’s rotting in your gutter for a good two weeks before the street sweepers finally get it
Possums plus Robots = ELDRITCH HORRORS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXVt2u5HZM (how do you embed video?? I can’t make it work, does the Toast not support it?)
“you lack gravitas you assed hole”
This is it. This is the most perfect sentence in the English language. This is what all those monkeys chained to typewriters could never produce. It is my new god.
I am making a whole LIST of people to whom I need say you lack gravitas you assed hole.
lurkment patch
POSSUMS ARE MAGNIFICENT CREATURES. They are North America’s only native marsupial. They are prehistoric creatures and if you look at the fossils of ancient possums, their bodies have (essentially) not evolved, which is highly unusual, especially given that they are essentially pacifist creatures. They have had more time than anyone to identify the best mode of survival and have concluded that “playing possum” is best. What does that say about the rest of us? They are above concern for their personal appearance, and although a prehencile tail is not attractive, it is CRAZY USEFUL. Unless you threaten their young, they stay out of your way. They are vital component to urban and rural environments alike. I know you are after a laugh, but why go on the attack and make fun of these beautiful animals when they are already needlessly scorned? This says more about you than it does about them.
I applaud the possum!
I do wish i had a prehensile tail.
YES. Been waiting for this post.
I love all animals but possums scare the shiiit out of me.
They are not of this world!!!!!!
Seeing one run into the middle of the street on a dark night has struck fear into my heart too many times.
Especially since I’ve only ever seen them in Brooklyn…shouldn’t they be hiding in actual woods somewhere?
How about everything what’s wrong of geese next, because geese are the fucking worst.
YES.
1. Too many teeth
In unnecessary places. Why would you put teeth on tongues???
2. The sounds they make when you’re just totally harmlessly walking in their path.
GEESE ARE JERKS.
I love geese, just for their hissing.
YES TEEN GIRL SQUAD
Apparently, I just have a soft spot for little gross rodent-type creatures? I love raccoons and opossums and I’m not saying I’d like to have a ton of them in and about my house but when I see their little waddle-waddle butts scurrying through the underbrush from afar, I go “SQUEE! HIM WIGGLE BUTT!” and it makes me happy.
A humble request for buzzards. They’re like post-apocalyptic crows.
But in their defense, they are polite enough to wait until you die before they eat you, instead of actively causing your death.
There was a distinctly ex-possum in a tire in the falling-down shed constructed entirely of old doors that was in my back yard when I moved into my house. Several days after moving in, I returned (reluctantly) to the shed to find no such possum remains. I have since found several possum skulls about the place, have had to chase their tiny-hole-finding babies out of a coop of outraged chickens in the wee hours of the night, and even had to scoop up a mean old daddy ratknifeface with a shovel when he decided to play possum instead of skittering away when shoo’d. I still wonder where that dead one went, and on the whole could wish for less pestilential nightlife in Oakland.
My new house has a garage/shed situation that has Seen Better Days and something keeps leaving anywhere from bits of to entire rabbits in it? It is somewhat horrifying.
“you are angering Hades” is a pretty solid thing to scream at a jawn.
But their tick-murdering habit needs must be applauded. I happen to find Lyme disease and babesiosis much creepier than their little pointy rat-faces. Look! http://www.snopes.com/opossums-kill-ticks-inhibit…
When I was in eighth grade I biked to school past a neglected almond orchard and one fall there was a dead possum right by the side of the road at the edge of the orchard. It stayed there, gradually rotting until is rat-sharp jaw was fully exposed and it was just a bony horrorshow, all winter. (I’m from California, so no snow covered this appalling spectacle.) I am STILL SCARRED from this.
PS, apparently the main Toast articles that inspire me to comment are about medium-sized rodent-like animals. Not sure what this says about me.
This is Gemma and her kindly possum visitor. I can’t decide if he has lost part of his slithery-nude tail, or if it is supposed to be truncated and awkward like that. *shiver*
Ah, long-haired dachshunds and their interest in things they should probably avoid.
Ha! She’s a golden retriever/bassett hound mix and the best thing ever is seeing her against an actual long-haired dachsund — it’s like seeing something out of a Siberia-based Soviet laboratory. She *is* interested in everything she should avoid.
ETA: For scale, this is a TWO POINT FIVE CAT-sized possum 🙂
[silent screaming forever]
Two opossum thoughts.
1) I once saw the back of something move behind a box in my uncle’s garage. I gasped. When I saw it was a rat, I said to nobody, “Oh, thank God. I thought it was a possum.” How scary is an animal if you think, “Oh, it’s just a rat.”?
2) I once got into an argument with somebody who *swore* it was called “possum” and not “opossum”, because the term is “playing possum”. Which is a fine argument, just not one you can state and then be all, “QED. I win.” and drop the mic.
There was once a baby possum in my yard and I felt sorry for it until my friend was like “Well yeah, but…it grows up into a full possum. Like, some babies are cute. But sometimes, they grow up and become Gary Busey.”
Really changed my perspective.
This is so important I finally taught myself to embed gifs y’all.
Another right thing about possums is they’re the easiest animals to make paper bag puppets of, due to their flappy muppet mouths.
Possums are a hotly debated creature in my family. My husband is quite fond of them, to the point of using a world-wide celebrity, Heidi the cross-eyed possum, as his personal icon. Me, i hates ’em. Some years back the white monster invaded our quiet lives by stalking into our garage and eating our cat’s food. I swore revenge and planned his demise. I got a wire cage, placed cat food in the back, tied a string to the door, threaded it through the cat door into the kitchen and waited. And waited. Hours passed as i lay on the kitchen floor waiting for the white monster to enter the garage and fall prey to my scheme. Finally he came, slithering in, sniffing warily. Not warily enough, possum! I waited, barely breathing, until his entire loathsome body was encased by the cage. With a savage tug I slammed the cage door shut, and danced the dance of the wily hunter. Filled with exhilaration I secured the cage door and turning to my husband asked “Now we kills him?”. No. No, we must be kind to the white monster, who was hissing and baring his yellow teeth in rage. Husband drove off in the dark with the creature to let him loose at some undisclosed location in the woods. Still I feel the thrill of the hunt and the wild joy of the hunter when thinking of this horrifying dweller of the night.
I promised myself I wouldn’t love anything more than “mashed-down smallbear” this year, and yet “NIGHT-RAT-BOY” exists so
What? What? 588 zillion comments and NO-ONE HAS MENTIONED POGO??!!
(Personally, I don’t care what the subject is, I just want to read Mallory play with language.)
Pogo, people! You need to read Pogo!
We have met the enemy, and he is Mallory Ortberg.
We have met the enemy, and he is Toast?
Have we all read Ursula Vernon’s possum god story? Because it is so so good: http://www.apex-magazine.com/pocosin/
OH MY GOD this is exactly what I needed, I was having one of those “man I sure am sad that Digger is over, I would like to read Ursula Vernon write about the religious traditions of weird little mammals right now” days, thank you!
I’m convinced that everything Ursula Vernon has written is amazing.
Does everyone also know about her “T. Kingfisher” alias that she does retellings of fairy tales and some other stuff under?
grasple-snatch
Also my confusion about “possum” vs. “opossum.”
That picture is terrifying, Mallory. And now I can’t stop thinking about this.
EXCUSE US MS MALLORY WE ARE INCENSED BY YOUR MOST RECENT SLANDEROUS AND LIBELOUS ARTICLE AND HAVE CRAFTED A SWIFT REUBTTAL HERE https://medium.com/@cl_christensen/everything-wha…
“Some science to think about.”
I am allured of all science and lo, verily, I am convinced.
I can tell you what possums eat! They eat bananas and saltine crackers. I know this because I lived in a double shotgun shack one block from the Mississippi River in New Orleans and a baby possum broke into my kitchen repeatedly. The kitchen had originally been a back porch and it was pretty rickety and un-possum-proofed. I had to start putting all of my food into the refrigerator to keep it from midnight possum ravaging. Even the crackers and bananas. You are never far from the full force of nature in Louisiana.
My mom used to give me banana slices on saltine crackers when I was sick as a kid.
Possums are stoned! And eschew personal hygiene in favor of being hit by cars.
My brother, while he was taking care of the house on his own for a year (his freshman year of college, poor thing), was alarmed at 2 in the morning one night by a panicky baby possum that had somehow gotten itself trapped between the window and the screen window. The police wouldn’t send an animal control person, and my brother couldn’t go let it out from the outside, because its mother was out there being angry and horrible (did I mention it was 2 in the morning and he was alone in the house?). Finally, he remembered he’d purchased a sword cane at Comic-con (don’t worry, this has a happy ending), and he opened the window just enough to cut a small hole in the screen from the inside. Baby scrabbled and slithered its way out, and its mother took it and its devil-screams away.
I had an ex whose nickname for me was possum. And he gave me a terrible possum stuffed animal. I don’t know where that toy went, but I *do* know why that relationship didn’t work out…
(honestly though, I don’t mind possums. you do you, guys.)
Mallory I am with you on possums 100% but I think there is some information you need about human babies; namely they do indeed cratchle-scrabble onto your skin with their little fist-knives, grasple-snatch, and permanently breast-feed with their teeth and nails.
And then laugh at you and try to bite your face. While permanently breastfeeding with teeth and nails.
THIS. This is all of what I felt at age 12 when my 10-year-old sister told me to come downstairs and see what was in the Hav-a-heart trap. It HISSED at me with all of the knives in its mouth, I shrieked and leapt into the air, and she LAUGHED at me. While I have (mostly) forgiven my sister, I shall NEVER forgive possums.
Ahhh – everything you say it true! The dogs got a baby possum and I had to dispose of it. I did not shed a tear.
That possum that launched out of the laundry and scared the bejesus out of me? Well, the next day we came home from work to find it drunk, staggering around our yard after eating rotten peaches. A drunk possum. Not as funny as you would imagine.
An albino possum haunts the woods next to my neighborhood and betimes ventures out to terrify us.
Australian possums are pretty adorable, though. (When I was younger my family went on holiday to Australia, and while walking through a campsite at night to get to our camper van, my siblings and I saw some eyes shining in a tree and a furry tail. It turned out to be a possum with a baby, and we fed it bits of banana from our hands, and it was wonderful.)
“YOUR WHOLE ENDEALMENT, I DON’T PRIZE.”
This is the summary of a lot of things and also people that I have deeply needed for as long as I had awareness of things and people. Thanks.
YOUR MOUTH IS FULL OF MURDER needs to be a slogan on a bumper sticker. I want one.
Garbage. They eat your garbage.
Once when I was a kid I climbed a tree and there was a lil hollow in it and I was like oh cool I can hide my child treasures (probably a happy meal toy and a cool rock) in there but when I pulled myself up so my face was level with it THERE WAS A POSSUM and he showed me his teeth and went HAAAAAAAAACSSSSH and I have never recovered
Has anyone mentioned their horrifying forked penises yet? True facts. You should be more afraid than you are.
This is literally everything I never knew I wanted to read.
You have failed to attend to the fact that possums literally have more teeth than any other land mammal!
I had always thought it was my imagination that they had just an absurd number of teeth, like five times too many teeth, but no, it’s objectively true.
My brother and I made up a song about opossums (mostly just the word opossum repeated over and over; I’ve never claimed to be a song writer) because I decided I liked them because I thought they were the okay looking Australian kind. Now I know that I had it mixed up and they are, in fact, vampire-cat-rodent-devilment creatures, and I am now mourning the loss of childhood innocence.
I should emphasise it's not 100% possum – usually about 30-40%, mixed with merino. There's a super-nice yarn that is 10% silk as well.
This blog has a great page on the evils of possums in NZ, and reviews of a number of possum yarns available in NZ. Some of which are distributed overseas. https://kiwiyarns.wordpress.com/possum-yarn/
All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you. I have not laughed this hard in a long time.
mallory you have entirely ruined your disposition with too many books
This is like Elizabeth Bishop poetry on speed and bath salts.
Which is to say, perfect.
“human babies don’t permanently breast-feed with their teeth and nails”
welllllll…….. my nipples say otherwise
That harrowing scene with the possum in Dead Man Walking.
http://www.thereversegear.com/dead-man-walking-th…
This is all the truth. ALL THE TRUTH
Echidnas. Do echidnas next.
Are they playtypi? Porcupines? Either way, why do they need four-headed penises?
I cry-laughed through the whole thing. You shaven’t.
Oh wow I did not know that! I thought only Australia had marsupials – how did they get all the way over there???
Still, not as cute 😛
Yeah New Zealanders hate possums as fervently as Aussies hate foxes, cats and rabbits. Feral animals are bad, no matter how cute they are 🙁
When I was a kid I had a book with animal illustrations in it, and I realise now it was obviously American because it had this weird looking creature labelled "opossum" and I was like "the hell is this mum? That's not a possum? I don't understand!"
It seems as though this might be the time to state that I’ve been bitten by a possum, on the shoulder, hard. They have A LOT of teeth.
Thank you for changing all of my possum thoughts. You are a good person.
That only makes them scarier.
Reading this very late, but I wanted to say I'm sorry for your loss. That must have been awful. 🙁
Possums are actually…..misunderstood. Take my depicted persona; Heide, a resident of the Leipzig Zoo until euthanized in September of 2011 for health issues (as an alleged kindness). First written recording of the term "opassom" arises in 1607 from Jamestown colonist John Smith. The word "opossum" is corrupted from Virginia Algonquian (Powhatan) language, as derived from the Proto-Algonquian word *wa˙p- aʔθemw, meaning "white dog" or "white beast/animal" (unconfirmed). The possum is invested with extraordinary immunity to the venom of pit vipers such as rattlesnakes and cotton-mouth moccasins. As omnivores with sub-species branching between primarily vegetative and meat consumption, the evolutionary adapation to food survival must be appreciated. The prehensile tail….would you not gladly accept such a useful feature if painlessly adopted? The Yapok (Chironectes minimus) is absolutely unique as the only semi-aquatic marsupial, using webbed hindlimbs to dive for freshwater mollusks and crayfish. As a marsupial, the females are possesed of a divided uterus and marsupium (pouch). The largest difference between the opossum and non-marsupial mammals is the bifurcated penis of the male and bifurcated vagina of the female (the source of the term "didelphimorph," from the Greek "didelphys," meaning double-wombed). Opossum oil (possum grease) is high in essential fatty acids and has been used as a chest rub and a carrier for arthritis remedies given as topical salves. Possum meat is traditionally prepared by smoking, then stewing. It is light and fine-grained, but the musk glands must be removed as part of preparation. The meat can be used in place of rabbit and chicken without diner awareness. Their tails are eaten as a folk remedy to improve fertility (thought to be related to the tail prehensile nature). Depicted below is the essence of inscrutability with a truly elegant black/white contrast. In short, the possum is grossly underappreciated. Perhaps I identify with the solitary and nomadic disposition of these living miracles.
Jim Clark's photo.
As a girl I kept pet rats and always had a box of Cheerios on the floor next to their cage to feed them– Once I woke up in the night to the sound of crunching Cheerios and turned on the lamp and saw it was a possum and thought “ah, it’s their overlord come to claim his tithe”
Were you also aware that the possum is a marsupial–the only one native to North America–meaning that, in addition to other flaws, they have fleshy, moist pouches in which they carry their trash babies.
I welcome my backyard oppossum. It's very cute, I think, and not at all scary. It seems to keep the yard free of ticks (that's one thing it eats) and even my cats aren't worried about it.
RIGHT!! And you know why they carry Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis? They eat infected dead intermediary hosts like cats and raccoons, and then shit out the protozoal organisms (often infecting feed and water) that the horses then ingest :(((((
I love you man. Despite pet rats
Whenever my neighbor sees a possum, they tell city services it's a huge rat because the city won't deal with possums because they don't carry diseases. IDK if that's true, but that's nice.
If you hadn’t shaven’ted you would after seeing this painting by Albertus Seba.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/…
Did Amos Starkadder write this? This was the something nasty in the woodshed, wasn’t it?
Harsh! They eat lots of ticks!