The possum that lives in our garage

I wasn't sure she was there. I think I started to believe in her late in 2012, when H was clearing her stuff out of the garage. We found a cardboard carton that had obviously been inhabited.

One day I was getting out of the car when I happened to glimpse a furry leg sticking up over the rolls of carpet on top of the playroom cupboard. I always greeted the possum after that, but she was pretty scared. At one stage she even "played possum", lying on her back with her legs in the air.

Brian suggested feeding her apple cores. At around this time, I broke a tooth by biting into an apple. My Danish friend Billie, who is a dental nurse, instructed me that it was time ("at your age!") to stop biting into apples. Fiona was down for my birthday and bought me a cunning apple slicer which leaves a perfect, cylindrical core. From then on the possum was in luck.

Not all that long thereafter, the possum had a furry leg sticking out of its pouch. I'd told everyone not to call it "he". In the spring, Blossom the possum had a little baby.

Blossom and baby

Now Blossom appears erratically, rather than spending her days on the playroom cupboard. Occasionally her baby is there instead. It stands and holds its arms up in a startled manner. (I heard about that recently on the ABC programme, The Possum Wars.) Blossom will just about tolerate a touch on her ear while she's nibbling, but the baby is far more cautious.

Dac leaves fruit for them even when they're not around. We no longer see them every day, but we see that the fruit is gone!

Blossom had a baby leg sticking out of her pouch again when we saw her on 5 January.

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Page created 31 December 2013; last updated 09 January 2014