Post #450311 by AlohaStation on Tue, Apr 28, 2009 1:43 PM

My favorite Possum story - True story!!

Adding to the possum frenzy - here's my favorite possum memory. When I first moved into my house, there was a family of possums living in my attic. So I bought a humane trap and it worked immediately. Caught the first one right at sunset. That night a storm was rolling thru so I felt bad so I climbed up onto roof and covered the cage and gave it some food. Early the next morning I was going to release it in the Everglades. To get it to the Everglades I had to place the cage in the back of my Jeep Cherokee. Have you ever smelled a scared possum? They release a musk much like a skunk. So I'm driving down the road with my head stuck out the window trying not to puke! The Everglades are surrounded by a levee, I pulled around a beach that airboats use and proceed to the top of the levee to release the possum. I have a bit of experience with handling animals from my days of working at a roadside zoo (remember I live in FL). The possum did not want to come out of the cage so I struggled trying to get him out. Eventually I get the possum out of the cage and it looked at me like "what now". It slowly walked down the levee towards the airboat, beach area. DONE - not quite. As it walked away I grabbed the cage and placed it back in my Jeep. As soon as I turned my back - SPLASH, SPLASH!! When I turned around the possum was gone and there were only a few ripples in the water!! I was sooo pissed. Not that it had gotten eaten - it was the fact that I took such good care and suffered thru the smell and struggled getting it released - I didn't get to see it get eaten!!!!

I caught 3 more and tried to duplicate the experience with no success - they all lived, damnit!!