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Australia

orphia nay said:
I wonder if the possums are atheists. ;)
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lolpossums.jpg
 
Thanks Akenhaten - 10 yrs this month since I was last in Oz, and you've made me terminally homesick! Heading down under next year for an extended stay though.

I remember when I was at Uni in Brisbane I heard barking outside, from a dog being walked past. A possum came scrambling through our front door, up the hallway, and ran at highspeed into the kitchen towards the window.

The window was one which opened horizontally, so it was angled like a slide outside. The possum leapt up on the outside, then curled it's tail over the top of the window. As it hung there, looking around the back yard, another small tail came down from it's back and curled around the window beside it's mothers - one of the cutest things I've ever seen!
 
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icerat said:
Thanks Akenhaten - 10 yrs this month since I was last in Oz, and you've made me terminally homesick! Heading down under next year for an extended stay though.

I remember when I was at Uni in Brisbane I heard barking outside, from a dog being walked past. A possum came scrambling through our front door, up the hallway, and ran at highspeed into the kitchen towards the window.

The window was one which opened horizontally, so it was angled like a slide outside. The possum leapt up on the outside, then curled it's tail over the top of the window. As it hung there, looking around the back yard, another small tail came down from it's back and curled around the window beside it's mothers - one of the cutest things I've ever seen!
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My former house in Toowoomba, which is now my daughter's house, has had several generations of the same family of brushtails living in the garage roof for many years. From time to time they make too many new possums and we have to relocate some of them.

These two were released at Picnic Point, Toowoomba, in 2007. The golden colour of the young feller is an unusal variation that one sees from time to time, and not just his juvenile colouring.

The entire City of Toowoomba is a Fauna Sanctuary, so there's lots of critters about. I used to blend in quite well.


Possums.jpg

Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula)​
 
lionking said:
Possums cute?

Nevermind. Let us know when you are downunder. I'm sure there will people wanting to catch up.
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Damien Evans said:
The small ones, yeah. Brushtails? Not so much.
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I suppose it's all relative. This is what the 'mericans call a possum:


Opossum.jpg

American Opossum (Yikus bloodyhorrificus)*​




* This might be a made-up name. I'd double check, if I were you.
 
Yikes indeed!

Still, ringtails are bad enough. Dad caught one once, and my older sister tried to pat it, and it bit her hard. She didn't think it was so cute after that.
 
Ringtails are eeeeevil over here. They're utterly decimating our native forests and wildlife, particularly the many birds that nest straight on the ground in the open (due to a lack of traditional predators).

In the film The Piano during the opening shots flying over the bush you can see many dead tree branches reaching up into the sky; the result of possums (and an unavoidable historical anachronism!)
 
orphia nay said:
Yikes indeed!

Still, ringtails are bad enough. Dad caught one once, and my older sister tried to pat it, and it bit her hard. She didn't think it was so cute after that.
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The only way I'd try to pick up a possum that hadn't been hand-reared is with barbed wire gloves. I've still been bit a few times, and as bad as that is, the claws are the hurtiest bits.

Speaking of When Possums Go Bad, I have a woo theory to share:

Cats and Possums are invisible to each other!


The first few times I saw 'evidence' of this, I was sure that all that had happened was that the pussycat involved had simply had a close encounter of the possum kind and learned to stay clear of the teeth that bite, the claws that snatch, but it seems to me that there's more than that going on.

I feed the possums here, and they can be seen most nights out on the back lawn eating some leftover bread or a piece of fruit, and the cats will walk right by them, within easy reach of each other, but not only do they fail to interact, they don't even acknowledge each other's presence. The possums go on munching and the cats just walk on by without so much as a turn of the head.

All of my cats and all of the local possums display exactly the same behaviour, as do Rachel's cat (Taz the Spaz) and the possums in Toowoomba.

I'm half-convinced that they've worked this weirdness out between themselves just to mess with my head, so I'd be interested to know if anyone has seen anything similar.
 
gumboot said:
Ringtails are eeeeevil over here. They're utterly decimating our native forests and wildlife, particularly the many birds that nest straight on the ground in the open (due to a lack of traditional predators).

In the film The Piano during the opening shots flying over the bush you can see many dead tree branches reaching up into the sky; the result of possums (and an unavoidable historical anachronism!)
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There's nothing even remotely cute about that situation. It's an ongoing disaster and I feel for you, Kiwis.

I'm in the process of assembling an article about invasive creatures in this country, and I'm now prompted to add a bit to it about the problem our own 'export' has caused you guys. A little more awareness of the problem can't hurt.

I only became aware a few weeks ago that there are thousands of Sugar Gliders being raised as pets in Seppoland, and the first thing I thought of was the damage that the Ringtails have done in New Zealand. I hope the Yanks don't have the same experience (although they have a good mob of predators over there, at least) and I really wish people would learn not to keep moving critters to places where they don't belong.
 
As an Aussie, I am in favour of open-season shooting or other trapping of this introduced species in NZ. Seriously. They are not cute-n-cuddly at all - they are quite ferocious and deadly to contestant animals. So as long as the NZ native wildlife can be filtered out of that process, I'm all for wiping out introduced Aussie possums in NZ except in zoos. Maybe a fur-trade??
 
Our cat has occasionally caught a feathertail glider. Fortunately they're not in the least bit endangered - in fact, they're endemic all down the east, from Far North Queensland to deepest darkest Victoria. IUCN categorises it as "Least Concern". You don't see them often, because they're extremely shy and very very small.
 
The only good thing about possums is when you go hunting for em and spot one with your torch they do the "deer in the headlights" thing making em very easy to shoot.

Introducing animals into an ecosystem that is not used to them is indeed a very foolish thing to do - you hardly need to point that out to aussies. Two words. Cane Toad. If not that, one more word. Rabbit.

Likewise here, stoats, weasels, rabbits and possums have utterly devastated the ecosystem.

Ah well... we can but learn from past mistakes...
 
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