Why you should brake for possums
http://www.caryinstitute.org/discover-ecology/podcasts/why-you-should-brake-possums#.UxU-8bmqXQw.facebookThe Virginia opossum is not the brightest of animals. When they are threatened, they pretend to be dead, which is where we get the expression "playing possum."
Sometimes, they do this in response to threats from oncoming traffic, which results in possums becoming roadkill.
The next time you see a possum playing dead on the road, try your best to avoid hitting it. Because it turns out that possums are allies in the fight against Lyme disease.
Possums, like many other small and medium sized mammals, are hosts for ticks looking for a blood meal. But possums are remarkably efficient at eliminating foraging ticks.
"In a way, opossums are the unsung heroes in the Lyme Disease epidemic."
Rick Ostfeld, author of a book on Lyme disease ecology and a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, explains...
"Because many ticks try to feed on opossums and few of them survive the experience. Opossums are extraordinarily good groomers it turns out – we never would have thought that ahead of time – but they kill the vast majority – more than 95% percent of the ticks that try to feed on them. So these opossums are walking around the forest floor, hoovering up ticks right and left, killing over 90% of these things, and so they are really protecting our health."
So it's in our best interest to have possum neighbors. This means keeping their habitat intact with thoughtful land use planning, tolerating them in our yards, and, whenever possible, avoiding possum collisions.
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i use that one on my grandkids.
The ones in my neighborhood, not so much.
Found an abandoned baby in my garage one morning. Looked just like one of these:
I found a local shelter just for them online-- a few people who just rescue injured or abandoned opossums, and they came and picked the little guy up in an hour or so. Apparently they only live for a couple of years. I had no idea.
even when they haven't been drinking. 
This was about 8 years ago, in the Twin Cities, MN, in mid-winter. My wife and I were leaving a movie theater, and as I came out the door I looked down to see a BIG possum huddling between the wall and garbage cans for shelter from the cold, 2 feet from me. I looked down at it, it looked up at me, and opened it's jaws wider than I thought possible and hissed. I just stood there, turned to my wife, and said "Possum!" I wasn't afraid, because I was pumped seeing a new animal up close.
The next couple leaving the theater, though, they REALLY freaked out As we left, we saw a few theater employees with brooms trying to chase it off the property, poor thing.
to retrieve something for me, He came back in a few minutes later telling me that there was an old man out there staring at him. I went outside with him to look and it was a possum who had perched himself up on a tall tree stump in the neighbors yard. I guess in the dark it could have looked like an old man peering over the fence, but to me it was just a possum. 
...but I swore off the old box many years ago, so I could be wrong.
However, there is definitely some basis for the Irish O'Possum legend:
The O’Possum Clan is said by many to be the oldest family in Ireland. Their history predates Stonehenge in England. It is said that the O’Possum Clan climbed down from the trees many years before the first Irish clan ancestors made any claim to the Beautiful Emerald Isle.
Clan O’Possum has lived and thrived in all parts of Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, the US, France, and most of Province Québec in Canada. It appears that the Clan did begin in Ireland, however. According to the book Clan O’Possum In Irish Life by Gary O’Blarney (1996), evidence has been found that members of The Clan were heavily involved in the construction of Newgrange and other Neolithic sites in Ireland. Their principle job in Newgrange seems to have been facilitating the transport the massive stones from the Wicklow mountains before the invention of the wheel. Apparently there was some discussion about inventing the wheel first just to make the whole thing easier, but the other clans were anxious to get going. Unknown members of The Clan suggested the stones be gotten from the mountains as it would make a lot of sense to simply “roll them down the hill.” They would have been much praised in literature of the time, had there been any literature at the time.
Posing On Driftwood(An apocryphal footnote in O’Blarney’s work suggests that members of Clan O’Possum may have tried to persuade others of their Neolithic brothers and sisters out of building sites such as Newgrange at all. While they were just as Pagan as anyone else, The Clan had been around long enough to know that the winter was going to end and summer was going to come without making any sacrifices. They illustrated the phenomenon with artwork that intertwined. They were in more of a “let’s just celebrate” mood and give the sacrifice to the poor, but they were overruled by those in positions of authority. There’s quite a history of this sort of thing.)
Descended from The Wicklow Mountains
The familiarity of Clan O’Possum with the Wicklow mountains was natural as it seems this is where The Clan first came down from the trees. The mountains are beautiful to this day and have some of the purest water in the world. It may have been that water that inspired very early members of Clan O’Possum to consider that good water and try a few things. Well what they came out with was one of the greatest things before sliced bread. From O’Blarney: “Clan O’Possum wanted to have goods to trade with the clans in the fine lowlands on the eastern side of Ireland, and while they had wonderful water, the lowland clans felt that had pretty good water too, thank you very much! As a result Clan O’Possum did roll enough stones to the lowlanders so that they might build a few walls and they paid our intrepid rock-rollers in grain. This worked out well for The Clan as they were able to make a course brown bread to go with the root vegetables that they gathered. (And no… they were not potatoes.)
Mashash’s Mistake
It was, however, a not-particularly-bright member of The Clan called Mashash whose attempt to make bread by putting the grains in boiling water that caused a happy accident. This young man was chastised by his mother and the mash, as they called it mockingly for its inventor, was set aside while they pondered what to do with it. While it was sitting, however, it began to bubble and had a delicious smell. Most clans would have considered it evil and immediately dumped the mixture and sacrificed something (trendy at the time), but as The Clan was not particularly superstitious, they continued to monitor Mashash’s experiment until it calmed down. And then some bold individual took a drink, and there, that day, beer was born.” (There is more to this story as Mashash’s sister, Distillata, tried further experiments, but that is for a later chapter.)
So there it is. Without Clan O’Possum, we would be drinking only plain water or maybe some sort of cola product, probably only diet, but that would be it. So thank The Clan O’Possum each time you hoist a beer and drink the health of all!
I'm not sure if that is normal life expectancy for the ones in the wild or not, but he had a great little life
That's so cool they hang out in your barn and let you pet them. Mine around here are very timid, and terrified of my dogs, but I always talk to them when I see them.
And, I am SO jealous you have goats! I just love goats!!
Heh... heh... heh...
turned me off for good. The fucker was staring at me, hissing, and baring his teeth.
Here's his brother sitting on a limb in my backyard:
- As well as zombies, ghosts and spirits too.
K&R
Score another one for the critters.
I, for one, welcome our new opossum overlords. 
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the state park after hours. That 'dead' thing they do, well, the dogs all found it, took a good sniff, and trotted right on by. It had me, too. Their pulse and respiration all but stops - a pretty good trick.
Nature and her endless devices. 
and since the deer are much more often nuzzling the feeders for seed, I'm happy
to learn about the opossum's anti-tick benefits.
They carry a disease that can affect horses pretty horribly.
Equine protozoal myeloencephalitis, or EPM, is a disease caused by a protozoal infection by Sarcocystis neurona that affects the central nervous system of horses.
<SNIP>
EPM is caused by the parasite Sarcocystis neurona. The life cycle of S. neurona is well described. In order to complete its life cycle this parasite needs two hosts, a definitive and an intermediate. In the laboratory, raccoons, cats, armadillos, skunks, and sea otters have been shown to be intermediate hosts. The opossum is the definitive host of the disease. Horses most commonly contract EPM from grazing or watering in areas where an opossum has recently defecated. However, horses cannot pass the disease among themselves, that is, one horse cannot contract the disease from another infected horse. The horse is a dead-end, or aberrant, host of the parasite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_protozoal_myeloencephalitis
The lesions caused by the parasite cause loss of coordination and can make a horse unsafe to be around as they can trip and fall with no warning. Usually by the time an owner suspects that their horse might have it, the neurological damage is serious and the horse cannot recover completely.
beyond them being a living creature that is no threat to me (especially in a car).
I swerve and break for all living creatures who happen to stumble onto my path (the roads weren't always there after all).
a lot of animals get food from the roads (usually gathers in cracks and those rumble strips they use now)... and in winter they'll come for all the salt being tossed on the roads 