Sunday Possum

The cute little fellow, above, was the first dig on Sunday, and was released to the safety of a nearby tree.

Possums are not too tough as quarry goes -- they have very small brains, are not very speedy, and have relatively small teeth (though they have more of them - 50 - than any other North American animal). The chief "competitive edge" of the possum is that they will eat almost anything and have a phenomenal reproductive rate. A typical female possum will have two litters a year, each with as many as 18 young. The gestation period for a possum is just 13 days -- the shortest gestation period of any furbearer in North America (though "birth" is into a marsupial pouch, not into the great outdoors).

This particular possum was a noisey little bugger -- he growled like a fox, but it was mostly bluff as it so often is with possums.