I have an Opossum in storage building (to get rid of)!

I have an old trailer house that is for storage, but its in poor shape and I intend to demolish it this summer. Actually the roof is fine, but the crappy particle board floor is just falling apart. I'ne replaced parts of it over the years, but rather than constantly fixing that floor which seems to be an endless job, I just built a pole shed which will get a concrete floor. this summer. I ran out of decent weather last fall, and didn't get the shed finished.

Anyhow, I went in the old trailer house to get some stuff, and expected to find some mice, which have done a lot of damage in there. But I was not expecting to come face to face to a hissing opossum.

I can see there is another bad spot in the floor (hole), so I know how it got in, but before I nail something over that hole, I need to get the opossum out.

This is a farm, so I can shoot it, but I'm not the best shot for one thing, and I only have a single shot 22. I could borrow a better gun, but I dont want to shoot inside the building, for several reasons. First I'll damage the stuff stored in there, second, there are aerosol cans of spray paint and other stuff that could explode if I hit one of them. Plus I'll be making more holes in the building.

So, I'm looking for another method to get rid of this opossum. I'd like to do it as humanely as possible, but will do whatever I must, since it's already done a lot of damage by knocking things over and crapping on stuff.

Any suggestions on what to use? Such as poison???? I do have a live trap (made for raccoons), so it's the right size. But I have no idea what to bait it with for an opossum. But I'd really prefer to use poison, because I dont really want to deal with a hissing critter in the trap, which I'll have to somehow kill anyhow. (There may be more than one of them too, but I did see one, and as soon as I did, I got the hell out of there). Just the thought of going in there to set a trap or something is making me uncomfortable. I'd rather deal with a raccoon, they will usually run away, (inless they have a nest of babies), but an opossum will attack a person any time.

Thanks for all suggestions.

Reply to
Jerry.Tan
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Pipe the exhaust from a gas engine into the shed for about 15 minutes and it's "good night" for Mr. O' Possum.

Reply to
Ben Berndt

Take a shallow pan and pour some ammonia into it so it evaporates. The smell of the ammonia will drive the critters out of the area.

Reply to
Ken

They're actually pretty amazing creatures and generally do more good than harm - they eat critters that do cause harm. But I wouldn't want one inside pooping around so try mothballs - that works with some other creatures.

Reply to
dgk

Peanut butter seems to work for all critters from mice to raccoons.

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This is groundhog size trap and can only catch smaller raccoons so you do need a big trap.

Last time I put it out, I got a skunk, which is a whole other story. Make sure you can open the trap from several feet away if this happens.

Reply to
Frank

Seriously...

If you are going to demolish the house this summer, just leave the dang thing alone. Even if you get rid of it, some other critter is just going to get in there.

Years back I live trapped and relocated a whole hell of a lot of squirrels and though my yard was empty for a week or so...before too long I had more new ones than ever.

( I did at least get the holes in my eaves patched with sheet metal and they did not get inside.)

Reply to
philo

Jah, mein herr, Zat is ze vay.... Keel de chews!

Boot, vont zey schtink to hi haffen ven zey rott?

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Wonder if the shallow pans of auto antifreeze (the green glycol, not the red Dexcool) would work?

- . Christopher A. Young learn more about Jesus .

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Reply to
Stormin Mormon

They roam at night. I wonder if you could just wait until late at night and block the hole. Failing that, put broccoli and peanut butter in the trap. There's no need to kill it and there's no need to get near it. Just plug the hole once it's out, then, if it's in a cage simply open the gate and walk away. The opossum will leave the cage eventually, after you're gone.

Reply to
Mayayana

When I was invaded by an opossum one night, it did not seem very aggressive. I laid a plastic trash can near it, and shooed it into the can with something like a fly swatter.

It stuck its nose out of the can when I picked it up, but retracted it when I patted its nose with the fly swatter. I carried it outside and laid the can on its side. The next day the opossum was gone.

Looking back, this approach might not be a good idea if it happened to have rabies!

Fred

Reply to
Fred McKenzie

Baseball bat? Shovel? Hoe? It's only a damn possum.

Reply to
rbowman

They look a lot more fierce than they are.

Reply to
clare

And often the damage supposedly done by possums is actually done by raccoons, but the raccoons leave and the possums get the blame.

Reply to
dgk

Possoms don't get rabies nor most other diseases. Their body temperature is too low. Also, they have opposable thumbs on their feet as well as their hands, so if that's mostly what makes us human, they're twice as human as we are.

Reply to
dgk

I'd heard about possums and probably saw them in zoos but I never ran into one in the wild until I was working a contract in Fort Wayne. Sure enough, it hissed, drooled, and played dead when I wasn't impressed.by the threats. I put them right up there with blue heelers. God made the animal, looked at the results, and said "Let's try that one again."

King snakes use the same tact. First they do a good impersonation of a pissed off rattlesnake. If that doesn't seem to be working, they launch into the dead snake act. King snakes are a lot prettier than possums though.

Reply to
rbowman

It's Possum - not 'Opossum'.

Reply to
thekmanrocks

I am not a possum.

Reply to
Punxsutawney Phil

A banana, or cheese. My opossums love cheese so much they catch bits I throw at them. After it's caught, release it somewhere. After all, you did invite it in with the hole. []'s

Reply to
Shadow

You sure?

opossum [uh-pos-uh m, pos-uh m]

Examples Word Origin

noun, plural opossums (especially collectively) opossum.

  1. a prehensile-tailed marsupial, Didelphis virginiana, of the eastern U.S., the female having an abdominal pouch in which its young are carried: noted for the habit of feigning death when in danger.
  2. any of various animals of related genera.

- . Christopher A. Young learn more about Jesus .

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Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Ok, here's my possum story. Two actually. I live in NYC and have a small backyard, 18" by 50" which tends to get very overgrown by August. I have it fenced in, with fencing curving in at the top, so I can let my cats roam around without them getting out. One August I'm trying to find Espy, a cat with a mostly white face and a pink nose. I pick up a bit of an evergreen so I can look under it, and there is a whitish face with pink nose, but the nose is way too long. Yikes.

I get a stick, lift up more evergreen, and whatever it is is lying on its side looking dead, and drooling. I panic a bit, fearing that it might have harmed Espy, but I find him elsewhere and rush him inside and then call Animal Control. Much to my surprise, Animal Control only deals with cats and dogs. Anything else has to be sick or wounded. Well, I tell the nice lady, I think it might be dying and it's drooling. Yes, she replies, it's playing possum. Oh. That's what it is.

So she tells me to call an animal trapper and I do so. But he tells me that possums are fairly common in the backyards, and that they do more good than harm and tend to move on after a few days. For $50 he'll collect it and drop it in a rural area, but why don't I just let it be and see what happens. After all, he says, it eats all the grubs and insects that do actual harm. Well, I don't want it huting my cats, but he tells me that it's probably been back there with the cats for a few days, and they generally leave each other alone.

So that's what I did. Nothing. After a few days it was gone. It had no problem climbing over the fence that kept my cats in. Of course, my cats really don't want to roam but the possum does.

A year or two later, I'm working on the computer and see two of my cats sitting in the hallway looking down at something. Oh oh. Whatever it is doesn't look like something that belongs in my hallway. It's not a bird, and too big to be a mouse, yet not a rat. Oh. Baby possum. I pick it up with paper towels and it moves. Not dead. I take it outside and it bites my hand. Stop that. I stick it through the chainlink fence into my neighbor's yard. As it goes through the fence, it grabs the fence with its rear foot. That's when I realized that they have opposable thumbs on their hands and feet. Very cool.

Then it dropped into the groundcover and wandered off. Twice more that day I had to rescue a baby possum from one of my cats. One was running around the yard with a possum in its mouth. But none of them were harmed by the cats, which is sort of unusual since cats are pretty much hard-wired killers.

A week or two later I spotted a half grown possum on a neighbor's steps, so at least one of the graduating class made it that far towards adulthood.

Possums have a tough life and they're really pretty interesting creatures. Marsupials (sp?), like the kangaroo, bearing live young who then live in a pouch. The only Marsupials in North America.

So when I read about folks that want to kill possums, I try to put in a good word for them.

Reply to
dgk

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