Last weekend we took the kids to West Coast Game Park Safari on the Oregon coast to see the animals. The baby snow leopard was the cutest thing ever. So was the baby bobcat.
But Quinn was most excited by the possum, especially since everyone got to pass it around. The instructions were to let it snuggle against your chest.
I had absolutely NO intention of holding the thing, but when Quinn passed it to Leif the hand-off was a little awkward and the poor possum looked stressed so I scooped it up to calm it down. (Odds are that you'll never hear me say that on this blog again!) None of my pictures show its tail. The face and claws might pass for cute, but that thick scaly tail was just too much for me.
To be fair, this was a very nice possum. My previous encounters with her species haven't gone nearly as well. Now that I know they help to control the tick population, I'm feeling kinder towards the possums in our yard. I'd just rather not see them.
Your last line made me smile. We have a lot of possums around here - you see them hit by cars on the road as often as you see cats. I didn't know about the ticks, but I'm good with them eating them up! Your title made me laugh out loud.
ReplyDeleteI had a possum for a pet once. It started when my husband found a baby possum under a bridge when he went fishing early one morning. We thought he had probably fallen off of his mother. My husband brought him home and made a cage for him. When he was young we fed him rice baby cereal, tunafish and milk all mixed up. He also liked green grapes and peanuts, but the peanuts he just chewed up to get the oil out of them and spit the pulp back out. He was litter box trained and really very sweet. The easiest way to pick him up was to put one hand under his chest and grab his tail with the other. He'd wrap his tail around your wrist to help hang on. You ought to let the boys have a possum for a pet.
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