Awesome Autumn Possum

Wallpaper Description:

I was busy at my computer one rainy evening in November, 2017. My husband had just gone out into the back yard with our collie dog. Almost immediately I heard the back door open again. In a quiet voice, he asked me to hand him my camera, which I did immediately. I wondered if he had seen an owl or something.

A few minutes later, he came back into the house with some photographs of a possum. I was glad that one of them turned out good enough to upload to DN. But I forgot all about out it... until Jessowey/Jessica invited me to join her new possum group a month ago. I did join... and then went on a hunt for my only possum photograph. It was taken a year ago, but luckily it didn't take me a year to find it!

There are many kinds of possums in Australia, but only one kind in the United States & Canada. Sometimes they are called Virginia possums. They are also known as opossums. I hope I can get some more photographs of them as time goes by. My collie Katie has actually chased them in our yard a couple of times. Each time she did, they "played dead" and she left them alone. (Actually, playing dead is an involuntary response in the possum that is actually good protection for them. Most animals will sniff at a "dead" possum and walk away from it, just like my collie did.)

Possums are "pouched mammals" or marsupials. I was surprised to find out that Australian possums do not have "play dead" like American ones do. There are other differences also, but I'd rather focus on the similarities!

CollieSmile

PS. I was mildly tempted to save this photo for a funny Halloween wallpaper... but I didn't want to wait for still another year to upload this!