of course i have a story. float, my animal battles here are legit, and include me finding a possum in my garage which hissed at me with this evil look. Then as i stare it down in fear, i quickly wonder if this mofo can leap, and if he can and is aggressive, i'm in trouble. (its then and there the one time i wish i was IP, because i woulda already known the answer) I call a friend he says chop the [uck fay]er up. Another says shoot it. No help. Then wife reads about all the stuff they like and my garage was utopia. So i go back out and he's still there, i grab the hoe next to him, of course he's latched onto it. Not a grand ending, but i try to shoo him off of it, finally do in driveway, he takes a couple steps then turns around and hisses at me again and as my wife is watching out the window she can hear me talking shit to him as in mother[uck fay]er i'm being nice but this is about to freak me out enough and go another direction, so i start hissing back and swinging the hoe around. Then he turns around and i took the flat end of the hoe and sent him skidding across the aggregate. Considering adrenaline and square contact, I'm not sure anyone has ever shuffled a possum with a hoe any further. --we also had a white dove show up 3 days after my dog was hit and killed, slept in the dogs cage inside the house as it was cold outside and he just walked in. Let him out the next morning. He flew off. Hour or so later a stray dog shows up sitting on the porch. We never find the owner and he's still here 7 years later and the most loyal dog I've ever been around. --just facebooked yesterday a video of huge squirrels using our spinning birdfeeders as exercise equipment and parcoring all over the deck eating seed, flying 20 feet down and knocking seed down where chipmunks are fed --and Rambo still lives in the garage. He won't go in the live trap deep enough, even though now we've put insulation all around it so it looks like the garage ceiling but now he's like "wtf are grapes doing in the ceiling" so he won't go in. --also had a 3 or 4 foot snake bow up on me so i got my kids golf club and was going to take care of him with a 7 iron, swung too hard with the light ass club, right foot flies out from under me on the wet turf and sends me down about a foot fron the snakes face. He mustve felt sorry for me, stared, slid backwards a little then slowly away.
It's opossum, the "o" is silent. They are not aggressive but will bite the shit out of you if cornered. Best bet is to scare the shit out of them so they "play dead," then quickly and carefully move them. They aren't really playing dead, it is a physiological response like a fainting goat and they are literally out of it-- but not for long and they will wake up ready to scrap. Your solution sounds solid to me. Only thing I could think of to do different is try to give it a big scare so it isn't hissing and moving. Did not google, grew up in the sticks and have had many opossum interactions. Also didn't google that opossums are the only marsupials native to North America, their ancestors migrating from South America/Gondwana across the Central American land bridge relatively recently in geologic time. I can bore you to death on opossums without any googling, I assure you. I think they could make for an interesting pet. We had a dog fight one with a litter once. Pink little baby ones were thrown all over, total opossum massacre by the dog. Horrific, really. That pouch doesn't have much of a zipper, apparently.
sarcastic and funny IP is enjoyable. And i know it has an O, but didn't deem necessary as people can figure out the animal i'm referring to and if you type the "o", 7 of 10 readers will begin the word with the sound "oh" so may as well just start it with a p
I second scaring it. A shotgun blast within a few feet will render it to where you can pick it up by the tail and sling it down down a hill. I don't recommend handling it that way. I'm just saying it's possible. Why not just shoot it? They taste about like they look.
Was at my parents’ place in west TN this past weekend, they had a nest of sharp-shinned hawks and it was teach them to be hawks day. Pretty cool.
I used to catch them. And had a pet opossum for a few years. They'll bite, and scratch, so for a wild young one, get a stick or something they'll latch on to up front, and then get them by the tail.
