Jen’s Reviews > Possums Are Not Cute! > Status Update

So cute and fascinating, review to come!

If you REALLY just have to have the possum cuteness, become a rehabber. Join up with a wildlife rescue center and learn how to do it properly. One shouldn’t half @ss being the caretaker of any animal.

Also, despite eating whatever they can get their paws on, feeding them a healthy diet is NOT as easy as opening up a can of food and plopping it on their plate. They also require other specialized care and need to walk a LOT more than a dog. And vet bills, who needs them? Let it be in the wild.

I really like how this book stresses that possums are NOT pets and that they deserve a full life the way they were meant to live it, in the wild. They aren’t dangerous critters, but that doesn’t mean they should be pets. Besides, they are more beneficial to humans in the wild, eating pests like ticks and cockroaches.

By unintentionally killing possums via car and cats (keep your cat pets indoors people! It’s better for the cat AND the environment/ecosystem), we have unnaturally selected for possums that die within a year, but have a HUGE amount of young quickly.

Possums eat venomous snakes, cockroaches, mice, rats, edible garbage, carrion and anything else they can find. So incredibly important part of the ecosystem and great for pest control.

Possums run about 94-97 degrees Fahrenheit, so they don’t carry a lot of diseases that affect mammals, such as rabies, distemper, feline hepatitis and parvovirus. They also eat about 4,000 ticks a week. Ticks are the dirty needle of the natural world, so anything that eats that many of them is ok in my book!

Possums in the wild will growl and hiss and show their teeth when frightened, but not because they are violent. They put on a show to avoid having to be violent. Wild animals=leave alone. Unless they need help, then call wildlife rescue. They are also quite smart creatures too, performing better than cats, dogs, lab rats and other animals in tests!

Female possums have two uteruses and the male has a corresponding forked counterpart…. Evolution sure either 1) has a sense of humor or 2) is high. A lot.

Possums gestate after 13 days, then the size of a honeybee, they climb up their mother’s fur to get into the pouch, where they nurse on a nipple that basically turns very thin, goes INTO the stomach of the baby and then expands to hold the baby in place until it’s big enough to venture out of the pouch. Ok, possums are cute, but they are also somewhat weird.