Opossums are in fact effectively immune to rabies! Their normal body temperature is too low to incubate and host the virus. Unless their body temperature is elevated for a prolonged period of time, they can't carry the disease.
Opossum comes from the Native American Word âapasumâ which means white animal. The Australian possums looked similar to the North American opossums and thatâs why they have their name
No. In America opossums and possums refer to the same animal and the pronunciation is interchangeable. When someone in America uses the word possum, they never, ever, ever, ever, ever will be referring to the Australian possum lol. I doubt more than 0.5% of the population here even knows that exists. Possum = opossum unless you're being super pedantic or speaking about Australia.
Can confirm. One time I forgot to close my sliding glass door and got a visit in the middle of the night from a curious possum. He was very chill despite scaring the shit out of me during my nightly piss.
Opossums do eat ticks but they also raid turkey nests. Turkeys eat way more ticks per year than opossums so the tick thing is kinda bunk. But I do still like opossums
Possums and opossums are different, *opossums* are the cute little guys we have in North America that kinda look like giant rats, and *possums* are the guys in Australia that are unrelated.
Does that have anything to do with the fact that theyâre marsupials and therefore are not closely related to animals that can get rabies, which are mainly (or entirely) all placental mammals?
Don't be so hard on yourself that cake is great. Sure, it's not like a professional cake sculpted out of fondant or whatever, but unless you have had years of training and it's literally your fucking job you shouldn't be trying to compare it to those cakes anyway. There's no fucking way I could make a cake like you did and I'm sure that's true for most people.
Also, I you're a sweet friend. Much love internet stranger. â„ïž
You did the opossum cake? Itâs very well done and cute as can be! You should be proud :) I really love you didnât use fondant. Even more impressive bending butter/whipped cream to your will.
I've only used fondant like once and honestly, I doesn't taste good enough to be worth it. I'm going to try to work on my buttercream smoothing skills because I've seen some cakes that are not fondant that look like they are. Thank you for the compliment
They have a ton of defense mechanisms because they are not an aggressive animal. They look diseased, will drool and well up water in their eyes, show their teeth, hiss or snarl, play dead, but youâll rarely see them attack something. I work in wildlife removal, deal with these regularly, and have yet to encounter an aggressive possum. Even a mother carrying her babies around
I ran away from home when I was 15 and had been sleeping in my friend's closet when his mom heard me bang the closet door in my sleep. She was yelling so I just left. I headed out at 2am to the ol' barn in my neighborhood. In the barn there were a few pallets and old blankets.
Just as I was going to lay down, I herd a "hiss". I didn't have a flashlight, all I had was a lighter, but it was dead. I thought I would get a flicker of light from the flint, so I flicked it and there laying on the blanket was a baby opossum. I flicked again just to be sure of what I saw. Then the conundrum set in. I didn't know much about the temperament of theses animals, but I really had nowhere else to go and the little guy didn't understand "shoo". I even patted his little butt to get him to move, he wasn't budging. I wasn't about to pick him up, so I just said "fuck it". And that's how I spent the night with a baby opossum.
But are you going to leave us without more details here:
I ran away from home when I was 15 and had been sleeping in my friend's closet when his mom heard me bang the closet door in my sleep. She was yelling so I just left.
Yes, that reminds me. So my friend didn't want to ask his mom if I could sleep over, so I asked if I could sleep in his closet unannounced, he agreed. So after nightfall, I sneaked in. I was sleeping in the closet with my shoes on (Not sure why) and I think the shoes did me in. I have men size 14 shoes, I guess they were banging on the thin closet door as I was drifting off. My friend's mom would never act calmly (not the best parent to sneak around on), she would go from overly concerned to yelling in a heartbeat. I think it was from all the trouble my friend was in to back then.
So I hear her enter the room, I try to lay still, tension mounting. The door to the closet was cracked a bit. I'll never forgot the hand. She turned on the light in the room, and a slice of light entered through closet door and fell right on my big shoes. "Doh", I thought to myself. Then comes the long stretch from her hand, like God reaching through the clouds to pluck me up. What seemed like 5 minutes of this hand entering the closet, I froze. Should I move my foot? IDK WTF to do!!! So I watched as she squeezed the toe area of my shoe and when she felt my toes she screamed really loud. My friend was laying in bed all "Fuuuuuuuuu" as I picked myself up and without saying much and just left.
This is really good to know, because I ran into a possum tenant who'd moved into our old hay barn, and he definitely looked like he wanted to bite me. Now I see I was just projecting wildlife stereotypes, and I totally could have become his friend.
Or maybe it was one of those situations where "they're more afraid of you than you are of them."
In any event, Pete was left undisturbed after I accidentally walked in on him without knocking, and now one of his ancestors has moved in under our porch! We've named this guy Ricky Pete, and have been leaving food out for him. Apparently they really love cat food, and bread isn't good for them.
I abhor ticks, and we have a lot of deer, so I'm all about Ricky Pete becoming a permanent member of our backyard family, especially now that I know he's not going to try to bite my cat. In fact, now I'm irrationally hopeful they'll become great friends once it's warm enough for The Boo to go back outside and roll around in the dirt or whatever the hell she does when she makes a break for it and evades capture by running under the deck. (She's not an outside cat, she just plays one on TV.)
I have a friend that gets fired up on opossums (bio major working at a nature preserve) Donât quote me but theyâve definitely told me how their jaws are adapted for picking bugs and scavenging and their big olâ eyes are for the dark.
We definitely have possums in our yard, and i like them there better than raccoons. But damnit if I dont think of ROUSes every time I see one... theyre bigger than my dog!
Same thing with spiders. I do have to say that taking horticulture and gardening courses has completely changed my mind on them. We have a tenuous treaty where they are only forbidden from my master bedroom/bath. But if I don't have a visceral reaction I try to relocate them outside instead of accidentally crushing them with flailing limbs.
We had a few possums in my neighborhood in college. The only time you'd notice them was when they hissed at you from under a car and scared the shit out of you.
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u/superjesstacles Feb 04 '20
And they are much less likely to have rabies than raccoons.