When my wife and I first married, we lived with my grandmother in a small cottage in Moonee Ponds, Victoria. Up the road lived our most famous citizen, Dame Edna Everidge who greeted everyone with a flamboyant “Hullo possums.” That is because leafy Melbourne is home to hundreds of thousands of possums, and is known as the possum capital of the world.
Early the other morning on the way to let the ducks out of the duck-house, I opened the back door, and there on the mat was the most bedraggled, wet possum you have ever seen. His head was down resting on the mat, and his pink eyes were looking up at me imploring mercy. He was saying, “Help me please. I’m sick, really sick.”
I went to get my wife but he mustered his strength and crawled under the verandah. “Probably has eaten rat bait”, she said in a knowing fashion. She was right. We do not use rat bait, except down in the roof of the woodshed. Our property is rodent free since the two mopokes took up residence.
With a possum under the verandah having taken rat bait, in a few days I’d smell his location and have to crawl under to remove him. I had recognised him as the teenage son of the two possums that have lived in our trees for several years. He was last year’s young one who clung to his mother’s back for four months while they ate at our bird feed tray just outside our bedroom. He had not listened to his mother who had told him not to eat fast food take-away. Junk food would not do him any good and it hadn’t.
The next morning as I walked behind the ducks on their way to the dam, I found his carcass on the lawn. His throat had been eaten out, and his stomach, heart and lungs and intestines eaten. It was the fox that has been worrying my ducks at 3:30am every morning. I hear him “yipping” in the night air and I often get up and put on the lights in the duck shed, both to reassure the ducks and to frighten the fox away. One of my ducks was killed and eaten two weeks ago. Just having the lights on settles the ducks.
The previous night, the fox had found a possum and dragged it down the property to feast in peace. Hopefully he would have also eaten the rat bait. Foxes disgorge such bait, but hopefully it would be back in its den with his young when it did so. They also don’t listen to their parents, and so would have gone for the fast food option with dire results.
We have both ring tailed and brush tailed possums in our trees. The ring tailed possums walk along the power cable coming into our house with their tail looped around the cable. If it is wet and they place their paws on the metal guttering, it is ZAP! BBQ Possum. The brush tailed possum, like its close relative the ring tailed possum, is widespread in Australia and is a major pest since it was introduced to New Zealand. It is an arboreal marsupial.
The brush tailed possum is one of seven species and is about the size of a cat. It has a pointy snout and a pink nose and eyes. Its whiskers are long. They can grow as big as 550mm long plus a tail which is another 250-400mm long. The tail is prehensile and assists the sharp claws in climbing trees. Once as a teenager I chased one across the road, and as he went up a tree, grabbed him by the tail and swung him up proudly to show my mates and a couple of girls I was trying to impress. With his ten claws on his back legs, he scarified my forearm. I instantly dropped him. It doesn’t take long for a teenage boy to fully examine a possum!
Possums in New Zealand and those in Tasmania are furrier then ours as they have adapted to the colder climate. That is why they were hunted for their pelts by Maoris and Aborigines who made warm fur coats from them. At one time, exported possum pelts were worn by the most fashionable English ladies.
Possums live in gum trees, their nests usually hidden away in the forks of branches. They become quite used to suburban life, and those Australians with corrugated iron roofs near gum trees will hear them thumping across usually soon after dark and just before dawn. Or if you have a pergola you can watch the entire family wend their way across to feed through the night.
They will try to nest in the house ceiling if there is any gap or opening. They make a nest near a chimney or a stove flue, thankful for the free heating during winter. Possums are nocturnal animals. Finding shelter and nesting sites is becoming their biggest challenge. With the removal of many large old gum trees, possums have to seek shelter in other areas. One common alternative is your house if there is access. As possums are nocturnal they move at night. They have a heavy thumping movement across a roof or ceiling. Possums cough or growl like their cousins, the koala.
We enjoy observing native wildlife on our property but possums are wild animals. If the possum is causing a problem, you have a legal responsibility to deal with it in a humane manner as they are a protected species. Destruction of the animals is unlikely to solve your problem.
If they are in your roof provide an alternative home for the possum. My son Peter and I put up several possum boxes high up …about four metres from the ground. Then prevent access into the roof space by blocking off access points. But wait until the possum leaves the roof at night then use timber or chicken mesh to block off access points before the possum returns.
The possum will be forced to find alternative shelter within its territory, possibly taking up refuge in a possum box installed on your property.
You can place a possum trap in the roof space to capture and remove the possum. Obtain a permit to trap and release possums from your local Council, which will hire you a possum trap. Trapping and releasing possums without possum proofing your building will not solve the problem. His relatives will just move in!
Release at sunset on the day of capture, on the same property, within 50 metres of the capture site. Do not release possums during the day because it increases their stress and puts them at risk of being attacked and injured by domestic pets or feral predators. Taking them far away will mean they will probably be killed in the strange environment.
Eucalypt leaves and other leaf species are the main source of diet for possums. But possums need to supplement their diet with other things such as grasses, herbs, flowers, fruits and insects. They dearly love rose bushes and we have to net around our rose gardens to keep them out. We allow them to eat some fruit but some fruit trees we also net. Wrapping some of the fruit in net and leaving some streamers of netting hang free seems to also keep them away. Commercially available possum deterrents such as Poss-Off or Scat, work by emitting an unpleasant odour, and will deter them.
Possums are not social animals. They usually only come together for breeding. Mating usually occurs during the autumn months, but births have been recorded for every month of the year. The gestation period (the time from mating to birth) is 16 to 18 days. Usually only one young is born. When the possum is born, it is the length of the end of your smallest finger. It is covered with hairless pink skin. Apart from its forelimbs, it is quite undeveloped. It uses these well-developed front paws and claws to help grip onto the mother’s fur and make its way to the pouch. Once safe inside, the jellybean-sized joey attaches itself to one of her mother’s teats where she will grow and develop. They stay here in the pouch until they are around 120 days old and well furred.
The famous children’s author Mem Fox sent a story to nine different publishers over five years. Nine rejections. Very discouraging indeed. The tenth publisher: Omnibus Books in Adelaide, accepted it but asked her to cut the story by two thirds, re-write it more lyrically, make it even more Australian. The book was published early in 1983.
Possum Magic became and remains the best-known picture book in Australia and the best selling picture book ever in this country. It’s still in hardback, which makes it a publishing phenomenon. Well over one million copies were sold in its first ten years of publication. By mid 2009 its sales were over three and a half million.
Possum Magic has been set to orchestral music and performed three times by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. It has also been made into a highly successful musical. There have been Possum Magic height charts, birthday books, calendars, address books, bookmarks, balloons, a recipe book, and Grandma’s-brag book etc.
In 2006 an adorable board book for babies (a very short version, one word per page) hit the market; and in early 2007 a divine Possum Magic baby book was published by Omnibus Books. Possum Magic is available in many editions a mini edition in hard back; a regular edition in soft and hard back, and a Big Book edition; and in two or three editions in the USA, also. The 21st birthday celebration limited edition (only 500 copies published), boxed beautifully, all signed by Julie Vivas the illustrator and Mem Fox the author, are valued at thousands of dollars.
Mem, who lives in Adelaide, says “I chose possums as the main characters for this book because we had possums on our roof and the babies were adorable.”
So there is another alternative. Write a children’s book about them and earn a million dollars!
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC