A passel of springtime possums

Here we were, on a beautiful Saturday morning, doing what we do best: sipping coffee, reading the paper, putting off reality as long as possible. Haven’t cleaned the porches and decks, and we’re staying indoors out of the pine pollen.

We can spend every morning like this, watching the birds, checking which have made it back to town, which have not. We have always had hummingbirds before the last day of March – but not this year. The thrushes must be back, although we haven’t heard their wonderful song.

Goldfinches are more numerous than usual, each day their colors richer than the day before. They swarm all over the Niger feeder a few feet from where we’re sitting, usually accompanied by a house finch. When something spooks them, they fly in their dip, dip, dipping pattern, sometimes taking refuge in a spirea bush. The whole bush shakes, its tiny white flowers spattering, a glass snow globe updated for a wistful spring.

A week ago, four deer paraded through the woods behind the house. They were tense, you could see it in their cautious gait. All they have to do is freeze and they become invisible against the dark woods.

“Hey! Look,” says Dave. “A possum! What’s he doing out in daylight?”

“Where?” I didn’t have my glasses on and could barely see the window.

“Right there under the butterfly bush,” he said, not moving so as not to scare off the creature.

Found my glasses and got a good look as the animal neared our deck. It was as soft and appealing as a cat, but Dave was right. It was a possum.

I don’t know how to tell the sexes apart, but this one looked feminine to me. Her face was mostly white and her body very clean and soft looking – except for its tail. Why does such an endearing creature have such an ugly tail?

Within minutes we realized there was another possum out there, bigger, darker, and presumably a male. We’ve rarely seen a single possum on the deck, much less two. They were apparently cleaning up spilled bird seed. Fine with me. According to what I found on-line, a neighborhood with a possum in it is a clean neighborhood. This marsupial will eat just about anything, dead or alive, carrion or fruit. In fact, it seems to have an appetite for snakes, and is immune to their venom.

I watched our visitor rummaging in leaves and sniffing the air fervently. “Dave, there’s another one. Bigger, darker. A male with spring on his mind, even though the temperature is 40 degrees.”

The first one hitched her way up a 6” tree and settled in for a nap on a tiny branch sticking straight out of the trunk. Our lot is heavily wooded. Why would she want that skinny tree when there are trees four times its diameter?

The thing I was concerned about, however, was whether they carry rabies. Off to Google, tra la, tra la, where we find that possums are extremely unlikely to become rabid. One source says you’ll catch rabies from horses, cows, or the ice cream man before finding it in a possum.

(A note here: I know the correct term is opossum. Possum sounds more comfortable to me. Besides, “Opossum” sounds like an Irish marsupial.)

OK, I was ready to share what I learned about possums this morning when the third one came along. Three possums at one suburban deck under a bright sunny sky in a 40-degree April day. Just the fact that these nocturnal critters are out in broad daylight propels me to look up possum facts:

Legend has it that Captain John Smith of Pocahontas fame heard Algonquin Indians call the animal “apasum,” which means white face.

The critter has 50 fine and very sharp teeth. Any wild animal will bite in self-defense, but this one is remarkably gentle. The hissing, drooling display of teeth is meant to scare an attacker.

Possums are not especially territorial and don’t hang around for more than two or three days.

A born scavenger, he’s on the same team as vultures and carrion beetles, cleaning up garbage and road kill. He also hunts down and kills roof rats.

Don’t give him too much credit for his trick of “playing possum” when threatened. He’s neither very brave nor very smart and is actually struck temporarily comatose out of sheer terror. He’ll recover in a half hour or so.

In early spring the mama possum has 16 to 20 offspring the size of a grain of rice. Twenty fit in a teaspoon. They somehow work their way up Mom’s underbelly and into her pouch where each one gloms onto a nipple where it will remain for several more weeks. Trouble is, Mom has only 13 nipples.

We watched our trio for an hour or so, until we got distracted by other things. The one in the tree stayed up there at least two hours, but eventually came back down and waddled off. I think the two bigger ones crawled under the deck.

Back to…I was going to say “the real world.” Deer and possums and gray catbirds are the real world, if we care to make them welcome.

Footnote: Had two sightings of the Mandarin duck leading a parade of chicks, with a mallard hen bringing up the rear. Latest report, however, on April 15, the Mandarin is still there, no chicks seen.