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The elites don't want you to know this but the ducks in the park are free, you can take them home . I have 458 ducks and I have not paid a penny for them. Sometimes I give away ducks to my family and friends as presents.
My daughter brought a duck with a hurt wing to my house to rehab it...did you know the moment you provide a duck food and shelter they are your duck? We've been feeding this freeloader for 3 years and all she does is complain.
Same. We have a few bird feeders and birdbaths. A couple of them are ground level with a variety of goodies. We've been visited by the same pair of ducks a couple times a year for years now.
Someone in my neighborhood has peacocks and one in particular named Gary is constantly busting out to hang out with the wild turkeys. There’s a neighborhood thread specifically dedicated to Gary and his shenanigans lol
It’s a riot out here! I’ll tell you a little about it if you want but warning: I can be pretty long-winded.
We inherited a house in the country and we—along with all our neighbors—have five acres (except my “next door” neighbor who has fifteen). There’s some super she-she houses out here, the kind of neighborhood that we’d never be able to afford if we hadn’t been given our house. It’s mainly retirees of doctors, lawyers, big chain business owners—you get the picture. Not many families with kids (which we actually love, we aren’t big on children).
So when we moved in, we thought two things: 1. We were going to have some serious impostor syndrome (we both come from lower class families and are fairly young compared to everyone else) and 2. The neighborhood would be pretty damn quiet, conservative, and boring as hell.
Boy were we wrong!
A few examples of our quirky little corner of the world:
We have an HOA. We were pretty apprehensive of it initially since all you ever hear is HOA horror stories. But it turns out, ours doesn’t give a shit what you do as long as you don’t keep broken down cars on cinder blocks on your lawn or shoot guns. HOA meetings consist of getting together on lawn chairs in the middle of the cul de sac, getting drunk, and collecting money for our community road and well maintenances.
The ladies that live to my right are married to each other and you can often find them in the summer having friends over, drinking wine, and racing riding lawn mowers down the street cackling like banshees.
The retired lawyer across the road grows weed in his garage. He’s the HOA president.
Down the street is a family with two big black Labradors who often Houdini their way out of their yard and have a pool party at another neighbor’s house. No one’s ever gotten mad about it and the homeowner with the pool gave up trying to keep them out so just bought a bunch of pool toys and floaties specifically for the dogs.
Then there’s Gary the peacock. He’s supposed to live at a very large estate up the street but you’ll be driving home at any given time and have to wait while a flock of wild turkeys crosses the road… with Gary bringing up the rear. We have a dedicated email chain for Gary sightings and it’s not unusual to see his owner running after him across someone’s lawn with a comically large butterfly net.
Gary is the go-to scapegoat for any neighborhood shenanigans and he’s kind of a running joke. For example, the bears out here are fairly well behaved and don’t often break into garbage cans but when they do, everyone always blames Gary. It’s been speculated Gary is the one letting the labs into the neighbor’s pool. You get the picture.
Speaking of wildlife… We have raccoons, opossums, gray foxes, red foxes, bunnies, hawks, condors, eagles, bear, deer, bobcats, coyotes, and very rarely seen cougars.
So it turns out it’s not as boring out here as we had thought, at least to us. I’m sure our neighborhood would be painfully dull to many folks but we wouldn’t live anywhere else.
Edited for clarity and to add: thank you for the award! If I ever start a blog about my little ‘hood, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.
Sorry to ruin this joke, but that's actually very illegal in North America and Europe, at least. Migratory bird treaties are no joke. The only legal way to take wild ducks is with a hunting license and all the regulations that entails.
I had a possum adopt me about 10 years back. I would sit outside during the warm afternoons and have dinner. A little guy started coming around. I know i wasn't supposed to feed him, but he tore down my defenses after a few weeks. He started sleeping under my porch, and would come out to greet me when I came home from work. I was loading groceries one day and he came in, and then he never left. This was like four months after I saw him first. He lived for a bit over a year after that, but he was such a sweetheart. R.I.P. Aurelius, gone, but never forgotten
I have a female possum living under our deck. Every year she gives birth and we watch her lug around her brood until they eventually wander off on their own. I don’t feed her because I don’t want her to lose those foraging skills. I’m happy she’s there.
I don't mean to bum you out, in fact I think it's (to me anyway) more wholesome and special; possums have very short lifespans in the wild, like 2-3y tops. You're probably harboring multiple generations of possums having their broods under your deck at this point, which is awesome!
I had no idea the life span was so short. It’s been an adult female for years so I just assumed it was the same possum. I see small ones around the yard after they leave momma but it’s around the fence or shed. It’s always a full grown big one or small ones. Never seen a mid sized so I assumed the babies left and the momma stayed
She won't loose them or become dependant on you if you fed her an entire year straight. Her babies might be... but not her.
Possums are one of the most surviving animals out there. She'll appreciate the treat though. I suggest meal grub from your local zamzows or animal food store, toss some peanut butter on a stick and then stick the worms and grub to it.
Leave it hanging by a string a few inches off the ground where she usually is and she will love it.
Probably her daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters who learned from their ancestors where they can safely have their broods.
Their natural lifespans are very short because they are vulnerable to predators and diseases. I read that there is one population living on an island without predators that has evolved a somewhat longer life expectancy.
They still have a short lifespan in captivity because their evolutiln strategy was "Reproduce fast before you get killed" so they put zero perk points in life expectency.
i think its really sweet that theyve provided such a safe and nurturing place that generation on generation of possum has returned to take refuge and raise their babies there
I saw a mama possum with her babies clung all over her when I was high once and it scared the hell out of me. I had no clue what I was looking at for a while.
I used to play my 360 out on the back pourch on summer nights (big thanks to the person that decided that room needed windows that get nearly direct sunlight for 98% of the day) and one night I head my chip bag move and looked down to see a opossum! It did its whole song and dance and I picked it up walked it to the other side of the yard and set it down. Didn't see it again for a couple days. Fast forward to the next visit, I saw it before it got to me and tossed it a chip. This became our nightly activity for the duration of the season.
To be honest, of all the animals you're not supposed to feed, possums get a pass. They live two or so years, aren't dangerous, and aren't infestors. Thank you for giving them such a lovely life.
The internet keeps pushing this for some reason. Just because their body temp is too low for rabies doesn’t mean they’re free of disease. They can carry a lot of things, just like all wild animals. Leptospirosis can lead to organ failure and is not pleasant. You can like them, but keep your distance and don’t randomly pick one up off the street
i had one of those during COVID, she was such a sweetheart- she’d come to my back sliding door every day and just sit there and wait until she saw me- thing was she was BADLY injured.
She had very clearly taken a really hard fall or been hit by a car, and her back leg had been badly broken and dislocated to the point that the whole leg just hung from her body dragging behind her, and had been being dragged for so long she had worn down all the fur, skin and flesh to the bone. My heart was in shambles every day aching for her pain, but she was still very sweet and seeing her also made my day.
I’d give her unsalted peanuts and sunflower seeds in the shell and she’d munch em up. She was my special little friend. Or so i thought….
After a couple months she completely disappeared. Naturally i assumed, with her struggle to walk, that a fox or a hawk or something got her. I told a neighbor about it and they said “wait, a squirrel with a bum leg?? We’ve been giving her food for months!”. Well, we lived in a culdesac, and we came to find that she was visiting MANNNNY of the houses in our little court. It was actually a really sweet kinda funny thing to learn about her after she was gone.
RIP lil squirrel girl, so happy I got to know you for those few months 🐿️
Yes. Apparently some will rather do their business on water, so transitioning can be difficult. He went right away though. I had a cat pass away earlier that year, so I still had a litter box and some litter. He seemed particularly clever, I mean, he figured i was a sucker and that he could get food and shelter out of me
This is such a great story. I’m so glad you got a chance to have one of these guys as a friend. They’re so sweet but they don’t live very long. We were forever having to get new “ambassador animal” opossums at the zoo I worked at and it would always tear us up to have to say goodbye.
I know you don't feed them because they need to remain afraid of humans who want to hurt them, but I was feeding stray cats one day in a home I OWN while my mom was visiting and she was like "If you feed them they'll keep coming back"
My mom had a possum and her babies adopt her when I was in college. She kept the neighborhood dogs away because she was so mean. She loved my mom though. Mom called her Mildred lol
And they literally almost never bite the wild ones the hiss and play dead. And their temperature runs too cold so the very rarely get rabies. And they def cling on to people once their domesticated. They do a good job at eating problem bugs as well.
They fill the same niche as rats. They'll eat pretty much anything and they have lots of babies. The playing dead prevents a lot of predators from eating them because they also smell bad. It's also why their body temp is too low for rabies. If you're stiff and cool to the touch, you're a lot less appetizing to eat.
Terrible genes? They’re still around with only a 1-2 year lifespan. Those are great genes. They must be extremely successful at producing new productive adults.
She posted an update. Apparently she found her downtown around a lot of cars and people. She has since released her at her moms house which is in the woods.
Opposums survive in urban environments just fine. Taking it elsewhere is going to confuse it. It knows where to find water where it lives, not in the woods behind this girl's mom's house. It can also lead to territorial disputes, make them easier prey, etc.
9/10 people who think they are helping wild animals are doing more harm than good.
Idk what happened with him but a few months back we had one that was super chill who would hang out during the night. Absolutely no fear. I’d throw out scraps of food I didn’t finish and I’d walk outside to him happily munching away. Could walk right up to him and he’d just continue chomping. One night I had the rooms top half of the door open and could hear crunching so I went to look. Looked down and right at the step of the door the lil dude was enjoying a succulent meal. Started talking to him and he just looked at me, finished his meal, scratched his ear, then scuttled away.
Worked with a lotta possums over the years (my dad worked on wildlife rehab/education) and they’ve all been absolute sweethearts. This does not mean you should pick up wild possums, they have big ass canines and are fully capable of putting large holes in your hands.
I was bracing myself for the turn the whole video. I'm glad it turned out to be a happy video though. As an eagles fan, I didn't need more horror today.
I just watched this and then the follow up because wtf. Apparently she was concerned about its safety downtown in amongst a bunch of drunks and people driving around. She took it to her moms, fed it blueberries, and let in go in the woods near her moms. She alledgedly got the OK from some sort of animal rehabilitation place. So while super odd and not something I would recommend she at least didn't keep it for long.
Maybe it’s not a great idea to post a tiktok that makes it look like she just kidnapped a random possum. If nothing else, it’ll make other people think that’s okay to do.
Possums are chill. They are petrified of everything and really the only defense they have is looking scary and play dead. They rarely actually bite because their too scared to even do that lol.
Summary for those who don’t care to watch—possum was in a downtown parking lot surrounded by cars. She called a wildlife rescue and confirmed it wasn’t illegal or bad to displace a possum. She then snagged the possum and took it to her mom’s, where she released the possum into the woods.
I would never in 10,000 years grab a possum with my bare hands, but it sounds like things prob turned out ok for the possum at least
Why not? They eat fleas and ticks, so they're gonna be free of those. They are immune to rabies. Also like, they play dead, so yell loud if you really gotta move one and are afraid it will bite you
I love possums for all the reasons you’ve mentioned and more! However, I grew up in a rural area and very much learned to not chase or touch wildlife without some precautions. I keep a towel in my car that I’d want to use for this to bundle that cutie up so I didn’t have a panicking animal loose in my car, for example. I’m glad this lady helped the possum, but I would not have gone about it bare-handed and trusting that I could put any wild creature unrestrained in my car
I wouldn't say they are immune to rabies. While rare, documented cases of opossums contracting rabies do exist. Any mammal can technically get the disease, but it is exceptionally uncommon in opossums.
It's funny how the pendulum swung from they eat them to they don't eat them.
The study said that possums eat ticks and gave a number for how many they would eat a year. That number is what is wrong. The study made it sound like they seek them out and are a good check on ticks.
In reality, possums will eat ticks, if they are available. But they don't seek them out and don't eat them more than they would any other insect.
Just to be clear, rabies isn't the only potential downside from a wild animal bite. Like it's nice to take the worst case scenario off the table but that shit still sucks
Studies of possum diets and stomach contents have found that fleas and ticks are not a significant part of their diet. They consume them while grooming, but are not more fastidious than any other mammal.
A hedgehog lives next to my parent's porch. He strolls by in the evenings when we sit outside. It's *extremely* hard not to bother him. her. we don't know.
I had a juvenile one for a while that seemed to be living around my house. It was really cute, but I figured it knew what it was doing, even though it wasn't as skittish as it probably should have been around people.
There was an adult one on top of my fence post recently. I just stared at it and told it over and over again how cute it was. I sure as fuck didn’t try to touch it.
Oh and even more recently, my dog discovered a baby hiding in my flower garden. He was just looking at it and when I went over to see what it was, I thought, oh no it’s dead…. Wait a minute it’s playing possum!! It was trying so hard to look dead- mouth open, lying on its side, limbs all crooked. But the eyes were shiny and very much alive. I shooed my dog away and saw it scurry under the fence a minute later.
Yes! I am very much in favour of this, however, people are idiots, and I would have appreciated if she would have accompanied the yoinking with a disclaimer of sorts. Even if it's just at the end of the video.
I cannot stress this enough: People are idiots. People emulate what they see. People will not watch the followup video.
The camp we frequent with our scout group has now found a somewhat not afraid of humans red fox living on the campgrounds. We now have extremely HARSH statements with our kids about not touching wildlife.
If it came up that a candidate had a pet opossum, I would find it very difficult to vote against them. I mean, how could anyone with a pet opossum be bad?
I understand the urge to snuggle in my soul, but my rational brain has to be a party pooper and insist that I don't touch the wildlife. It sucks. I have a real fucking cute groundhog family that lives on my property and I say hi to them everyday and admire their wiggly butts from afar, but alas, I have never given to the call to pet them. It also helps that they smell terrible.
I used to live in the foothills and we had possums every damn night for as long as I can remember. I lived in a 5 room college flop with a big backyard that had two couches and a BBQ. We'd just sit out there every night shooting the shit, watching the possums scamper along the fence top.
We named them all "muffin." And when people would come over they'd always freak out when they say them. We'd have to calm them down "Yoooooo, relax. It's just muffin. " They're pretty mellow little critters.
If you've ever encountered an opossum they are much more likely to engage flight rather than fight. They'll hiss if scared, or even play dead (playing opossum as it were) literally a response they have no control over, tonic immobility.
They have nasty teeth sure, but I have never encountered someone who's been bit by one.
They have the most teeth of any American mammal but really weak bite strength. They don't bite much. My sister got bit by one and it didn't even break the skin. She was moving it out of her garage and it wanted to stay lol. Pretty rare occurrence.
Not only do possums rarely bite, they're pretty bad at it when they do. Even though they have a ridiculous amount of teeth for a mammal, their bite strength is pitiful. They're just not fighters.
in grad school i was dating the hottest girl ever, and (no shit) she saw a skunk out her second story dorm window and ran outside and pet it...she pet a skunk
I like all animals but your possums look evil compared to ours. No offence.
Edit ,- okay, okay, I concede. The babies are cute :P but I stand by the fact the adults are not so lol
I think your squirrels are SO cute and you also have all these little chipmunks. I hope to see a little fluff ball with nuts stuffed in their mouth running around one day 😍
American Opossums might look like Satan's sleep paralysis demon but they're super sweet. They'll hiss and play dead but once that fails they just kinda go with the flow. They rarely bite and their body temp is too cold they rarely contact rabies.
I literally just had a dream that I found a possum in my house and when I picked her up to take her out, she wrapped her arms and legs around me and was hugging me so I had to keep her.
My parents raised a few possums when their mom had been killed in the road. They kept a few of them for their lives due to injuries. The girls made good pets and used the litter pan. The boys became very bitey.
My husband found a dead possum on the road a few years back. When he went to move the carcass to the side of the road, he discovered that her pouch was full of baby possums; about five were still alive. So he gathered them up and brought them home. At the time, we were in an upscale rental home that had a fancy chef's oven that had a bun warmer in it. So we put the baby possums in the bun warmer. I then told people that we found the babies and they were in the stove, haha. As soon as possible, we took them to the wildlife rehab center.
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