Nature Bulletin No. 296-A   March 2, 1968
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Richard B. Ogilvie, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:THE OPOSSUM

Several times, in the past few years, newspapers have reported the 
discovery of Opossums gorging themselves on garbage in the alleys of 
downtown Chicago. They are numerous in our forest preserves and 
frequently found in adjacent suburbs but it seems impossible that an 
animal so stupid, with such a slow shambling gait, could travel 10 miles 
or more through a great city. Opossums seem to have the wanderlust 
and many are killed on the highways as they prowl around at night. A 
hundred years ago, although plentiful in our southern states and much 
hunted for their meat and fur, they were uncommon in central Illinois 
and Indiana. As they increased in numbers they gradually spread 
northward as far as central Wisconsin and Michigan, southern Ontario 
and Vermont.

Br'er Possum is a queer beast. He is a living fossil. Near the end of the 
Age of Reptiles, about sixty million years ago, peculiar little animals 
appeared on earth. Most of these had small heads with long snouts, 
walked on the soles of their five-toed feet, and the females carried their 
young in abdominal pouches. In ancient rocks of Wyoming and 
Montana -- in one instance, near the remains of a huge dinosaur -- 
fossils of an animal little different from our modern opossum have been 
found.

It is the one animal of its kind -- a marsupial -- in North America. There 
are several in Central and South America but most marsupials are 
native only in Australia and neighboring islands: about 30 kinds of 
kangaroos and wallabies, the wombats, the sloth-like koala "bear", the 
Tasmanian wolf, the Tasmanian devil, and-many other pouched 
mammals resembling moles, mice, rats, cats, and flying squirrels.

How has the possum managed to survive and thrive during these 
millions of years with tremendous changes in the earth's surface and 
climate, and in spite of modern civilization, when so many other 
animals have become extinct ? Because it eats anything, plant or 
animal, alive or dead; because it is very prolific; and because it has a 
peculiar way of carrying its young until they are able to fend for 
themselves, Further, it has remarkable vitality and ability to take 
punishment.

The young, from 5 to 15 or more in number, are born after a gestation 
period of less than two weeks. Each is a naked pink embryo-like 
creature, smaller than a honeybee, with no eyes, no ears, and a tiny 
round mouth. The front legs are well developed with sharp hooked 
claws but the hind legs are mere buds. Somehow it manages to crawl 
into the pouch on its mother's belly, where it fastens onto a teat and 
hangs for a month or more. After that, they come out and ride on her 
back, clinging to her shaggy fur. When about 3 months old, and the size 
of a half-grown rat, they leave her. In the meantime, in our southern 
states, she may be carrying a new litter within her pouch.

The possum's off-white head has a long sharp muzzle with an unusually 
large number of teeth -- fifty; naked black ears; and a very small brain. 
Its outer fur is long, coarse and grizzled gray. The long, naked tail is 
very muscular and used for carrying leaves and grass to its den, or for 
clinging to the branch of a tree. Unlike the front feet, the first toe on 
each hind foot has no claw and is like a human thumb, which makes the 
possum a good climber as much at home in trees as on the ground. It 
eats all kinds of insects, worms, snails, snakes, birds, eggs, mice, 
vegetables, corn, chickens, any dead animal, berries and fruit -- 
especially persimmons. When attacked, it feigns death-- "plays possum" 
-- with closed eyes, lolling tongue and a limp, apparently lifeless body, 
regardless of how much it is abused.

A possum, roasted with sweet 'taters, is heaps better than his I.Q.