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There was a coon living in the gutter system downtown for a year. We saw it going down the sidewalk a few times and breaking in to someone's garage once. It finally made a mistake and got hit on the road. I don't know how many times I blocked them out of the old barn. We had someone come in and remove a bunch of babies and yearlings before we started trying to cover the holes and trap the rest. Never did stop them completely.
 
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.
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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.
 
Why in Sam hill would one want to bother "rehabbing" possums or their "roadkill babies"??? Possums being the vermin that they are and a disease source, it would seem to me that one would not want to encourage their continued presence in populated areas. I guess that doesn't sound very "environmentally correct" of me but trust me...any possums making their way around my place will be trapped and disposed of, not "rehabbed".
 
Neither evolution or God creates a creature that doesn't get eaten by another. Something must eat them besides my neighbors, and my grandmother's dogs. Trust me I can't wait until the academic part is over and I get back to tromping around outside. However since I'm currently in southern Tx and I'm hoping to be in New England for my Masters I'll bide my time. And I would agree that real life trumps a book 95% of the time. Hence my stating that my knowledge was academic and not experience.
 
Most of the possums I have encountred wern't in my trap. For this critter I have a deal with on sight policy. I was always told that they came up here on the back of trucks decades ago, seem to thrive pretty well for a non-native creature. I guess the occasional one doesn't do to well, I have heard of a possum that lost his tail one winter.


LilacGal":275sl38e said:
An interesting study was done in Canada a few years ago about urban raccoons and how interaction with humans is causing them to adapt differently then rural raccoons. Apparently we're forcing them to become smarter as they adapt to stealing our trash and entering our buildings. Also they're home ranges are often defined by major roads. I wonder if coyotes will show similar changes when studied.
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There was an episode on the show "The Nature of Things" were coyotees were being tracked in multiple urban areas. The coyotees would just sneak around behind corners and cars if they sensed a human in the vicinity. They just walk down streets at night just as if they own the place.
 
Yes they do walk right down the roads, at least they did in Rancho San Diego (suburb of San Diego) when I was living there. I saw them a few times when I was running in the evening or early morning. They sort of pause to see what your intentions are and then go back to what they're doing. Never saw more then one at a time, usually near the park or near the golf course. They figured I wasn't going to hurt them and they knew I was too big to eat so they didn't really care one way or another. Skunks, racoons, coyotes and possums are all pretty numerous in the suburbs. Man kind may not like them but they usually unwittingly help them.
 
Randy":qrb97rgr said:
There was an episode on the show "The Nature of Things" were coyotees were being tracked in multiple urban areas. The coyotees would just sneak around behind corners and cars if they sensed a human in the vicinity. They just walk down streets at night just as if they own the place.
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Cleveland is full of MetroPraks, I believe the are called the Emerald Necklace. I have seen coyotes before, and near the shopping plaza about five miles from me. I no longer walk the nature trails at dawn nor dusk. They have been known to attack peoples dogs, though I hardly think they would attack a large German Shepherd.
 
You'd be surprised Skys, they'll lure dogs away and kill them, or breed a bitch in season if she's tough enough
 
I've never seen more than one at a time. But then I still think it wise to only walk in broad daylight. "You never know" is sage advice.

I fear that is what may have happened to my dear Flare. Being a Sable she really looked more like a coyote than a dog.
 
When I was growing up in the middle of no where PA we were always told that coyotes and dogs would mix. DNA testing in Texas and Oklahoma tends to support the fact that it does happen. And in Germany they tested the compatibility between coyotes and standard poodles. Which isn't that far off a shepherd in size. Resulting offspring were considered dangerous because they didn't fear man but they had a higher prey drive. Also unlike coyotes they would breed more then once a year.
 
I have heard of coydogs too. They are apparently pretty rare due to the fact that coyotes are suspected to have limited sperm production except for a few months of the year, and prefer to mate with coyotes rather than dogs.

http://wolfdogproject.com/coydogs.html
 
Coyotes are cowards here. If they see a person they run for the hills and you won't find them in town. They are hunted extensively every year. Occasionally the hunters would chase one across our property and spook the horses. They always came up to the door to tell us and appologize. There used to be a lot of them around our property but I hadn't seen one the last 5 years I was living there. When living at the other family farm I'd hear them once a year hunting in the 80acre field set aside for wildlife but that was it. Probably the mother teaching her pups to hunt in spring. They never came near the house. We did have foxes that conversed with our shiba and she tried to go join them a few times. Foxes will bravely stroll across the fields in daylight and burrow on the backside of hills nearby. They aren't hunted though because they aren't much of a nuisance. Pretty much only to poultry. There's enough wild rabbit and other things to eat that they don't bother breaking in to cages or buildings.
 
akane":13iliikn said:
Foxes will bravely stroll across the fields in daylight and burrow on the backside of hills nearby. They aren't hunted though because they aren't much of a nuisance. Pretty much only to poultry. There's enough wild rabbit and other things to eat that they don't bother breaking in to cages or buildings.
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Craziest thing I've ever seen was a fox strolling down the beach in broad daylight with people and dogs on the beach! I was there walking my dog trying to socialize him (so he was on a longggg lunge line) and there it was...up at the dune line just trotting along. I worried about kids trying to get close to it but fortunately parents were actually thinking that day and realized the fox might not be up for making friends....
 
I've seen more coyotes then foxes as of late but that has more to do with where I reside then anything else I think. At this point the only animal I haven't crossed paths with while out running is a mountain lion. And I'd like to keep it that way.
 
I have eaten possum, and coon, -- I definatly prefer rabbit- it takes a lot of purging and prep to make possums edible, - the best I had -was done by a Black family I was friends with in the South-I have no idea how they did it, but it was sweet and very good.
 
I learned a long time ago, don't eat anything unless I can readily identify it. I don't eat catfish, but I did down south, at night, in pitch darkness, next to a bonfire with 100 cousins I have never met before. I have no idea what they did to it, but it wasn't fishy, it was the best thing I've ever tasted. I could not eat possum, they have creepy teeth.
 
Catfish is standard diet here. You'll find in stores and people buy big aerators for stock tanks to clean out the system of big catfish before eating them. We generally fish in artificial ponds so the catfish aren't dirty. We fillet and freeze fish within minutes of catching them. Best thing I ever had was a large mouth bass we caught in one of the nearby city ponds. Not fishy at all and we didn't do anything special to it. The catfish aren't bad either.
 
Love catfish. Love mullet even more. Or, at least, I loved the mullet my grandpa caught and then fried up in his giant cast iron skillet on a homemade fire grill out back (a grill grate over a galvanized trash can). Coupled with the cole slaw and Sweet Tea (emphasis on *sweet*) my grandma made and you got the meal memories are made of!
 

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