The Three Little Piggies Plus Two

A year ago besides having a baby raccoon hanging around we had nightly visits from three opossums. We called them  Hoover, Shark and Dustbuster because they cleaned up everything in sight. Then suddenly they all disappeared and we missed them. Not only were they fun to watch but opossums are great guests to have around. While they were here we had no mice trying to get into the house and the tick population was way lower than other years.  An opossum can eat around 5000 ticks and that means fewer ticks to feast on the dogs. I looked it up and found that opossums are nomadic and the little group that we saw had probably moved on.

This summer I found no ticks on the dogs and only used the flea and tick treatment once all summer, so I believed that there were opossums in the area. One night last month Rob put out the kibble for the raccoons. When I looked out the window about an hour later there was a tiny little opossum baby sitting on the platter eating kibble. I was so happy to see him.

Then a few night later there were two medium sized opossums eating together. One has a light gray and white splotchy coat and the other was very dark gray. While they were eating a big pink piggy nose poked out of the hedge and they were joined by a very large, quite heavy blonde colored opossum. She was a much different color than any of the others that we'd seen. I checked online and there were no pictures of blonde opossums, but there she was. So I started calling her Marilyn. The others ate from the bowls for awhile, then climbed the rail to check out the feeder, but Marilyn doesn't climb. I think she's a little too heavy to feel comfortable climbing.

The baby comes early every evening, before the raccoons can bother her, and eats from the bird feeder. Splotchy and the darker one come most evenings. Marilyn only shows up now and then but stays for quite awhile when she's here. Last week a new opossum showed up. She's a light gray but instead of the usual stark white face, she has a soft gray face. She's actually pretty, for an opossum who tend to look like a cross between a rat and a pig.

So how do they do with the raccoons? Well, Shorty raccoon usually shows up early. One evening she was eating from the bird feeder when Baby opossum showed up. She also prefers the feeder. She walked up to the feeder but Shorty ignored her, so she came up behind and bit Shorty's tail. Shorty took off and now if she sees one of the opossums she runs away. Big Red is so big that the opossums all avoid  her, but Gabby and the opossums seem to get along together and will even share a bowl of kibble without hissing or fighting.

It's nice to know that we're still under the protection of a hungry group of piggy faced opossums. They more than pay for their feed, unlike the rowdy raccoons who just like to get into trouble.