Trapping Opossums

Now, why would I have wanted to trap an opossum? I didn't!!

I have tried - a few times - to trap a squirrel. Squirrels are our nemesis - eating away daily at antlers that we bought in Alaska (dropped seasonally by elk) and painstakingly brought back from there. Turns out squirrels like calcium.

We have two traps. Last year, I tried the bigger one. I was a little worried about trapping a skunk. I had an elaborate plan of how to let it go if I did. I wasn't thinking about opossums, but I should have been. First, it turns our opossums will go where they really don't fit. So I found the thing taking up pretty much every square inch of the trap. I felt very badly for it. It couldn't possibly turn around, but I figured it should be able to back out once I opened the door. It didn't. I lifted it so gravity would help. It didn't. Finally, I started shaking the cage and, bit by bit, it came out. It gave me this look that yelled: WHY?, though it was silent. It turned and lumbered off. That is the only word that describes the gait of an opossum.

I put that trap away and have never brought it out again.

This year, I thought I would try a smaller trap that I had used for rats. It seemed big enough for squirrels and, thankfully, too small for opossums.  I, in fact, did trap one squirrel, which we relocated up the coast. I was trying for another. And I caught - yeah, I'm a little dumb - a baby opossum. It said nothing to me, but gave me the look below.

I opened the door but it just kept giving me that look. I tapped the cage a few times and it finally realized it was free and, yes, lumbered off.

I was fascinated with the poop - which was not under the thing - but crammed into both sides of the cages. Obviously, they don't like sitting on their own poop, so it tried its very best to move it outside the cage (and succeeded a little bit).

My only other direct contact with opossums was when I worked at Kresge. One morning, one was lying motionless on the Kresge upper street (which is a pedestrian street except for occasional service vehicles.) It looked dead, but it was, you know, an opossum. Why would it play dead on a pedestrian street? I kinda kicked at it a few times and it didn't move. I called Deb, the animal control officer, and she said she would deal. I went to grab a coffee and await Deb's arrival. Of course, by the time I got back, there was no opossum.

Anyway, I am now completely out of the trapping business. I freecycled my cages away. The squirrels may have the antlers. 

In reading about opossums, I ran into this anecdote:

Sunquist found out just how trappable an opossum is when he was in Venezuela in the early 1980s doing fieldwork with crab-eating foxes. Nearby, Steven Austad was studying the social behavior of Venezuelan wrens. Austad recalls that his colleague was unable to catch enough foxes. "His traps kept filling up with opossums. I said, 'Mel, you're studying the wrong animal. These opossums are trying to tell you something.- Before long, both researchers had switched to opossums.