Always a pleasure! 😊

We try to keep contact with them to a minimum, and not get all cuddly with them. It also helps that with us having so many volunteers, they’re not getting so used to any one person’s face.

With these joeys being with their momma (or a surrogate?) they’re also learning wild behavior from the adult. Imprinting typically occurs during a certain window of development, and a lot of times they will limit human contact even more during that period, or we’ll hide our faces/bodies during interactions if they’re especially imprintable species.

Eventually they get a bit older and those instincts kick in a little harder and they will quickly start to want to have nothing to do with us and they want their own independence.

It’s always a little bit of a personal bummer when they go from being cute to being wild, but it’s how we know they will succeed on their own.

That is a funny looking bottle!

So I hear. I haven’t had opportunity to peep in a pouch myself yet. 😅

Looks to be the case here, with how these joeys are attached. Kinda surprised that a photo or diagram seemed hard to find. I guess the teats have to be really small though to fit those tiny mouths on, so it may not show anything anyway.

Arranging them in a circle with one in the middle would oddly make them look like a connect-the-dots of a human boobie, wouldn’t it? What a coincidence. 🤔

CalMatters (Click on Votes)

In the assembly, it looks like 8 Republicans voted against and 5 more abstained.

ACLU California Action and the City of Mission Viejo also opposed the legislation. (Click on Supporters and Opponents to read the ACLU’s opinion.)

Lady opossums have 13 tiddies.

Whisker dimples! 🥰

Don’t forget Ranger Rick, mascot of the National Wildlife Federation!

Hey, Lessy is a red (lesser) panda! 😜

Well, here is one of the big reasons I pursued working with these animals and they’re people in person… Not being able to trust everything you read, or sometimes the things you can’t find info on.

So the head rehabber and the animal education guy were both in this morning grabbing a pile of turtles, so I asked about the opossum bite. They looked at me like I was crazy thinking it was weak! 😄

They will do just about anything they can to not have to fight/bite, but she said the worst bite she ever got was from an opossum from that jaw muscle and those 50 teeth. So for whatever reason, they sound like they do have beartrap jaws. Their food doesn’t require it, their normal defensive style doesn’t require it, but they’ve got it!

So I withdrew my challenge. It seems I just have not been bitten by an angry enough opossum yet! 😅

I did get another squirrel bite today, but thankfully this one didn’t draw blood like the flying squirrel last week did!

I’m unsure about this assertion. (In a polite way!)

I don’t think of opossums as strong biters. The times I’ve been nipped at by them and based on what they eat don’t seem to necessitate strong jaws.

I didn’t see any actual statement in the opossum wiki, just that they have a large sagittal crest, which they do.

The larger crest, as indicated by the sagittal crest wiki, states that usually indicates a strong bite, but I was unable to find much actual data. I saw a number of folks state 45 psi, including ourr. I saw a number of folks state 45 psi, including our pals at For Fox Sake.

That’s about a third of our bite, the average not-scary dog is around 200, and big dogs are 300ish.

I’ll try and confirm this tomorrow if I get a chance to talk to one of the big shots at the rehab. I feel this is just something extrapolated from other animals, but that’s just my mix of opinion and experience.

Finally, some proper terminology around here… 😉

You’re the boss! 😁

Yay!

Thanks! We want as many people helping animals as possible, and it is always a bit sad when we meet people who tried to help but end up dooming their little critters instead! 😔

I feel bad always crashing your posts with stuff that’s kinda gross or a bummer, but I’m sure people would rather learn before they end up on the spot and not know what to do.

Did your fuzzy guy come in yet?

I’m loving mine. I try to remember to boop it at least once a day when I get to where I’m going!

It’s such a charming little copilot. 🥰

And even if an adult female has passed away, she may still have living babies inside her pouch.

It’s in the sticky, but just in case anyone hasn’t seen it:

DO NOT try to remove those babies from the pouch! Just place mom in a box or something and take the whole lot of them as is to a rehabber.

The babies jawbones grow around the teat so they don’t detach. Removing them improperly will cause those babies some big problems.

Even the animals that don’t like me are still beautiful, and I see all the ways nature can be harsh to them, and I’m just supposed to say “ok, baby! you’ve had 2 months of not getting raised by an actual opossum, but I think you’ve got this!” I’ve got no choice but to trust in the system, but yeah, I’m attached to all these little guys. They will always be in my thoughts for the rest of my life, and I hope they all succeed at playing out their roles. ❤️

That one’s still too small, but as we’re at the end of baby season, the clinic keeps showing videos of some of our last releases for the year. Yesterday someone shared themselves releasing 4 of our young opossums, and I was so glad to finally see someone else say they end up worrying about them all night! Everyone always asks if it’s fun releasing the animals, and while it is great to see them be grown and able to care for themselves, it still worries the heck out of me! 😥

Mine were all being jerks today for some reason, and a flying squirrel bit me and ran up my back and I had to pull it out of my hair. Be careful what you wish for! 😅

One of the opossums was grumpy enough he scared me twice and I almost fell on my butt, and the other 4 were ok, but not as polite as usual.