Friday, April 22, 2022

Ponderous Possum

On April 2, I posted a comical video in which a rather chunky opossum ran right towards me until, within less than a meter, it realized that I was a monstrous bipedal threat.  Going through my photo collection on my phone, I realized that, before I realized that a video would be better I had taken a still photo of the possum squabble that precipitated that encounter.  I noted then that the possum in that video was considerably smaller than its adversary, which is the larger, paler blob in the still photo:

I'm reasonably sure that this diesel Didelphis is a male, because they get considerably larger than female conspecifics, and this is the largest opossum I've ever seen.  As I was leaving work in the morning, I took a brief, non-optimal video of this chunk while juggling a couple of bags.  Check out the massive cranium on this critter:

Needless to say, I am a fan of this absolute unit.  I don't know what the growth rate for Virginia opossums in New York State is, but one thing that bums me out is that these critters rarely live more than two years in the wild (with the exception of populations on predator-free islands), so I'm going to have to enjoy the company of this chonky boy while I can.

9 comments:

Richard said...

They are so interesting! And fierce too, in their own way. It is said that they are edible. They don't look kosher/halal to me.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

I think the scriptures are mum on marsupials. They don't have hooves, they don't chew cud...

Richard said...

That is not a problem! It is an opossum! I am interested in these creatures. The scriptures are bullshit. Look what the scriptures have done to us! Meanwhile, this creature survives. Total respect for opossums.

Joseph Yinger said...

They are found on every continent except Antarctica and were key in neonatal research.

Ali Redford said...

I learned right here on this blog, a couple years ago or so, that opossums eat ticks. That's a great thing.

The only thing is, they like to get in under our house, and that can get kinda bad. DH has a humane cat trap, so when one gets in, we relocate it to one or another woodsy area of the lake. They're usually plenty PO'd about that, until they look around and take off. Around our lake, the opossum will be the BMOC.

Richard said...

I had to look up BMOC.
The funniest definition was backup mission operation center, but the consensus was big man on campus. They are said to be edible and tasty.

anynameleft said...

FYI
Back a couple of decades or so the NY Times and other news agencies made a big deal out of "Possum Gangs+ in Olympia, WA.
Was living there at the time and oddly ernough they were for the most part accurate.
Kinda funny If I remember there was a big boss possum in charge

Anynameleft said...

Oops upon reflection it was a gang of Raccooms that teerorized Olympia. i was wrong.
Though we had more then our share of Possums as well.
Mea Culpa.

Ali Redford said...

Richard, once upon a time I had a good friend who used to say that about the BMOC in the small city where we lived. Thanks for the giggle and the memory!