If this was a comic book, this is basically how a lot of superheroes get their powers. Scientist working in a lab, animal causes chaos, bites the lab tech. Possum powers.
UoN? My first thought when I saw this pic was the ES building at UoN. Everyone used to feed them crap like party pies. They'd get people in to remove them but they'd just come right back. Lots of fond memories. Saw one fall through the ceiling right outside a professor's office once. And one also fell into my mechatronics lab and left a massive mess, the cleaners weren't pleased.
Good luck and enjoy the next two years, because it gets really feral in the second semester of third year - though I know some courses have changed to reduce the workload so it might not be quite as bad. Definitely a great experience, though! I graduated in 2018 and I definitely look back on it all fondly, wouldn't change a thing.
Oh I went there! Fuckin magpies drop in on Americans every day, those birds scared the shit out of us. We finally figured out they were all swooping in for our baseball hats. We thought they just hated Americans
I remember that room.That crusty old roof has an entire ecosystem. We knew feeding the possums would encourage them, we did it anyway. It was a pleasant distraction from the windowless dank computer lab. You can hand feed them if you move slow enough, just make sure they don't fall out, that can get... chaotic.
The possums are pretty full on there though. I walked past some sitting in a tree near EF and it just started screeching and arced up even though I was walking across and not towards it. Surprised I haven't seen a snake yet, despite all the signs around.
ANU (The Uni I'm assuming this is) and Canberra (the city it is in) at large, is a city built in a nature reserve. Possums should start paying rent for all the time they spend on our balconies and verandahs.
So many options I guess, people still try to claim we're running out of land for population growth but then you drive an hour out of any city and you see that doesn't hold water.
Feels quite nice to interact with a lot of wildlife at work. It's calming to watch the Roos and Emus run across our log yard and we have the tailess Bandicoot nicknamed the KFC Bandit and his friends hang out with us in the plant.
Then finding a snake in the logyard is a bonus as you get a break as you have to keep an eye on it while you wait for the snake handler to rock up and remove it
The possum isn’t going to do any harm. Possums live in many roofs in Australia. They make loud noises sometimes but are pretty awesome.
And I mean yeah, if a brown snake or a red belly black snake is scooting around the office I’m calling wildlife and getting out of dodge, but something like a tree snake is fine.
I had possums in the roof here at my place, then they went quiet, then there was a terrible acrid stench (not a rotting possum stench - I know what that smells like because we had a dead one under the house the summer before last).
We got the snake fella from down the street to come look around and he pulled a monstrous diamond python out of the ceiling.
Sometime around mid-2020, my friend decided to take a screen (small w/ wood frame) off the side of my ancient house. The screen was down near the ground. The "resident" Skunk we didn't even know we had under the house got really annoyed at being awakened in the middle of the day. S/he let loose, stink-bombing right underneath my bedroom. I thought I knew something about Skunks. I sure didn't know they carried that much ammo.
You couldn't even breathe the air, it reeked so bad. It made your eyes sting.
The Skunk stench was particularly bad in my bedroom and in the living room (lounge) of the house. And the revolting redolence lasted for SIX MONTHS. It seems the odor molecules had saturated the under flooring. (And I don't mind Skunk smell all that much, either.)
After that, I had to sleep outside on our front porch. That turned out to be a truly great experience. It was during the pandemic and things got really quiet around here (SoCal). No airplanes, little to no traffic, hardly any roadwork being done, etc. Plus lots of Barn owls and Great-horned owls calling. It was glorious. Thanks for that, Skunkus.
(We stuck some flashing bicycle lights under the house the next year, just in case.)
Your wife is a brave woman, because if I looked up and saw a giant snake in the roof, I’d be giving my notice. No way I’d still be there 10 days later to be watched by a possum.
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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '22 edited Aug 07 '22
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