Possum Magic

Rhea and Lara quite like the book by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas called ‘Possum Magic.’ It’s a story about how Grandma Poss hunts all over Australia to find the food that will make her grand-daughter Hush visible again after she had made her invisible. The characters and the story are beautifully drawn.

Now that we have had the good news that our roof doesn’t contain loose asbestos, we’ve made some decisions about our living arrangements. They are not going to include possums in the immediate future. Poo pellets all over the back garden that stink out the shed, back garden and trampoline. Molted fur. Nibbled flowers, shoots and veggies. Little whiskery faces living in a box on the top shelf inside our shed. When our friend Alice stayed with us recently and got up during the night she thought there were about seven of them scurrying around the trees. I have put up with it for years now, but enough is enough. We decided to institute some magic of our own.

My preferred technique would be to put a bag over their box during the day while they are sleeping and transport them a long way away by car, then let them go. This is illegal. I did other research which suggested that they don’t like loud music or light, so blasting them with either could help. A series of studies undertaken by Deakin University indicated that the effectiveness of substances such as cleaning agents around their living area may be of some use because they didn’t like the smell. I found techniques for luring them out of your roof cavity then boarding it up; and others suggested planting shrubs that possums like so as to distract them from the plants you don’t want them to eat, while still enjoying their cute furry company. You can fix some thick plastic sheeting to a tree trunk at least 2m from the ground so that they have no grip to climb your trees and can’t jump above the barrier, and if you secure food sources like compost you can make your garden less attractive to them.

And then I asked Lara what she thought we should do about them. Initially she wanted to keep them as pets, but I explained that they are wild animals and you can’t pat them. And they smell. So she suggested that we tip them out of the box.

While very tempted by the kidnapping option, I thought it should be left as one of last resort. Apparently not only is it illegal, but transporting possums far away from their territory is almost certainly going to lead to them starving to death. Also, I think other possums would just move in. But we instituted nearly all of the other measures apart from Lara’s suggestion. We had a trip to Bunnings all together to get the necessary plastic sheeting and bird netting to secure the compost (Lara exclaimed when we drove past a week later: ‘That’s Bunnings! That’s actually Bunnings!’) I plugged the radio in to the shed and intermittently blasted them with Tripe J all day with the volume turned up (high, until a neighbour called out ‘turn that music down!’). Not only did Steve nail up the plastic sheeting, but I also thought I’d sprinkle it with talcum powder so that we’d see if the deterrent was working. I wiped away the droppings for the hundredth time from the edge of the trampoline (did I mention that it smells?) and squirted it with bleach. And then I thought that Lara’s suggestion wasn’t so bad after all, but instead of tipping the box out, I’d just secure it with another box on top while they were out at night (also sprayed with bleach), so I did. The other measures might have helped, but this one was the clincher.

Result: no more possums. So far. . .They are probably not far away, but they can sleep in someone else’s shed for a change. The only possums around here are going to be Rhea and Lara.