Second Nature Welcome, Opossum!
By Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center
T
he Virginia opossum seems designed for life on a different sort of planet, one
on which life happens slowly, where temperatures are warm and predators few.
Still, somehow opossums not only survive on our planet but they have been slowly expanding their range northward. They first arrived in Vermont about 30 years ago. The opossum has many distinctive features. It is, of course, the only marsupial in the United States. A mother opossum gives birth to embryonic joeys after a 13-day gestation period. About the size of a kidney bean, but with well-developed front legs, the newborns drag themselves up the short path to their mother’s pouch. When they grow too big to stay in the pouch, they cling to their mother’s fur and ride on her back.
Opossums also have prehensile tails, “play dead” when threatened, are resistant to rabies and are immune to rattlesnake venom. Opossums are good neighbors. At BEEC we field many calls about wildlife that are getting into gardens, eating prized trees or nesting in walls or attics. We don’t get complaints about opossums. Opossums eat almost anything, but especially rotting fruit, carrion, insects, slugs – they are part of nature’s sanitation team. Here is the reason you will want as many
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opossums in your neighborhood as possible: Opossums may be your best friends in reducing the incidence of Lyme disease. Opossums wander about like dust mops, attracting hundreds of ticks, most of which they groom off and eat. The few that get away are unlikely to have been infected with Lyme since very few opossums carry the disease. Your family can encourage opossums to visit and linger in your yard by creating opossum habitat, as campers did one day at
provide. A bowl of water would be appreciated by a variety of animals this hot, dry summer. The possum may thank you by gobbling up your slugs and Japanese beetles. Oh yes, and ticks. This fun activity engages kids on multiple levels: feeding the creativity that comes from explorBEEC this summer. Opossums are created or enhanced using availing nature and creating miniature always on the lookout for cozy safe able materials. BEEC campers worlds; building empathy by imagused leaves and dried grass for nooks where they can slumber all bedding and insulation, and made ining what it is like to be another day because they are nocturnal. roofs and walls from bark and logs. animal; and providing the reward They will shelter in hollow trees that comes from making a gift – in Of course, there were more whimor logs, abandoned burrows or in this case shelter for a strange, shy, brush piles. They are actually safer sical components, like pillows of awkward creature. moss and welcome signs spelled near houses and buildings than out with fern fronds. out in the woods, where they are Second Nature is contributed by the naturalists at Bonnyvale Once your opossum home has vulnerable to predators. Environmental Education Center. For more information, visit www.beec.org been created, you might think Take a walk to look for places or call 802-257-5785 about other habitat needs you can where opossum shelter could be
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