LilacGal":39rmrgvl said:
Most don't live long because just about everything bigger then it will eat it.
Also because it's such a slow mover it's commonly road-kill.
Now I am neither a trapper or a wildlife rehabber but I am
going to college for a biology degree.
Translation = it's an academic understanding of the species.
I've trapped these nasty critters since 1958.
Years ago, they were worth a buck or two at the fur sale.
There was a time a few years back, you couldn't get 50 cents for one.
Then, they were linked to mysterious deaths in horses.
Whatever the reason, I NEVER allowed one out of a trap...ALIVE.
I dispatched them and flung them as far as I could out in the timber.
They'd screw up a predator set quicker than any critter I know of.
I promise you....out of the hundreds I've killed and pitched into the brush.
ONLY ONE TIME have I ever seen a dead-possum eaten.
Great-Horned owls won't even eat 'em. But yet, those owls will eat a skunk.
What does that say about the palatability of a possum?
I've caught some really big possums over the decades.
How old they were, I have no clue.
But, their "life-span" ended abruptly when they crossed my path.
I despise them nasty things.
If they are so "TASTY" and such a slow mover,
HOW COME there's so dad-blamed many runnin' around in the woods??
I'm not knockin' book-smarts, but workin' in the woods trapping and
studying wildlife behavior trumps readin'. Experience is the best teacher
there is or will ever be.