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Didelphis virginiana
This cat-sized marsupial is covered in stiff gray hair, with darker legs and pink toes. Ears are small and hairless. The tail is hairless and prehensile. As a marsupial, the females have a pouch in which young are initially cared.
I typically find opossums in eastern deciduous and mixed forests. Their range spreads across the southeastern United States, north into southern Canada, and south into Central America.
The Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota area was once the northern limit of this animal's range due to our severe winter temperatures. Their hairless tails and ears suffered severe frostbite in our area and many of our opossums had signs of tail and ear injuries. The trend in warmer winters, however, recently has permitted their range to expand into northern Minnesota and several of my friends who live further north now see them regularly.
Spotted on Mar 9, 2005
Submitted on Apr 21, 2011
5 Comments
Gordon ... this wold be a great spotting to post in the "Marsupials of the World" mission. http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/8445...
Love the story, Gordon! I currently live on a farm & have a 9 mo. old coonhound pup. I need to rename her "opossum" hound though....She's constantly dragging them home. :)
I like your story, Gordan, thans for sharing.
I've never quite figured them out. They seem to be unconcerned about what goes on around them, sometimes almost as if they are unaware of their surroundings. Growing up on a farm, it was often my job to collect eggs from the chickens. I'd reach into the nest box and push the chicken to one side and grab its eggs. On one occasion, I reached in pushed the chicken aside and collected a couple of eggs. Reached back in and repeated the process, but this time the "chicken" hissed at me. That got my attention and I looked in the nest to discover I'd been pushing a opossum around. With its 50 teeth, I'm sure it could have caused some pretty good injuries. Never just felt blindly in a chicken's nest again.
One of my favorites. A couple of years ago I was sitting at my kitchen table and a young opossum strolled through the backdoor and calmly ate the catfood.