The local pest man has told us we have a possum. But it is obviously not just any possum. We have the bionic possum. We can't catch it, can't kill it and can't even sight it. The bionic possum laughs at our attempts to move it to a more suitable possum-like residence. It is no ordinary possum. It can steal fruit from traps without setting them off. We tried small traps - the bionic possum is so large apparently it could steal the bait and its body would stop the trap door closing. Not to be thwarted by a mere marsupial we got a large feral cat trap. The bionic possum treated this with scorn and has stolen the bait without setting off the trap. Every possible entry to our roof cavity has been sealed and closed. Still the bionic possum goes in and out. The Farmer has scoured every inch of roof space with a torch searching for this marauding marsupial. (And incidentally made less noise doing so than the possum does at 3 am.)
It is not as if the bionic possum is lacking other suitable housing. We have trees and bush galore. But no - it chooses our roof. Look possum - wouldn't you like to live in the old shed or trees shown below?? Surely that must be the possum equivalent of a 5 x 3 with ocean views, home theatre and an outdoor kitchen?
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| Suitable Homes For Possums |
Alas the possum seems fond of our roof cavity. But that's OK possum - the battle will continue to rage. It's going to be "hasta la vista, baby" any day now.
On a completely different note to whinging about nocturnal noise I would just like to send a bloggy shout out to my real life friend Suz. I love your comments and the fact that you read all my posts! So lovely to feel "in touch" when we are all so busy.
Anyway - hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend!
Take care.
5 comments:
Thank god I don't have a possum up there, but I did hear a snake slithering last year and we have caught many, many rats in the roof space. Can you put a low voltage bright light up there? I think they hate that and it hurts their eyes, so will stay away.
No possums here either thankfully, though the rats have been exceptionally problematic in months gone by! Thankfully all is quiet in the roof cavity at the moment.
Love the new autumnal tonings of the blog too by the way.
We always have possums in our roof here too. They are so noisy, it sounds like they are trying to dig into the ceiling and we figured out that's what they are doing when they managed to make a hole in the ceiling above the garage. The worst in when they are mating, and it sounds like a cat being strangled!
I'm not sure about WA but here they are protected so it's illegal to kill them. You also don't want to poison them, then you'll have to remove the carcass from inside your ceiling!
You need to get an expert who knows what possum entry points look like and blocks them, apparently that's the best way to get rid of them otherwise it's likely that a new possum will take up residence where the old one built a home...
We had a bbq at our place last night and a possum incident then too, will blog about it soon :)
Wow, thanks for the lovely message! I feel like a celebrity:) You have my heartfelt sympathy about the nocturnal noise. Since we built we have had very loud/frustrating/infuriating and puzzling lightning crack noises in our roof (right above our bed no less). So loud it would startle us almost out of bed. We were nearly at the point of selling the house until the builders finally figured out it was coming from a massive steel beam expanding onto our ceiling rafters. Two crowbars later and a bit of fibro sheet between the beam and supporting bricks and I'm finally back to not wanting to commit murder. Hope you get it sorted soon! X
We had an astonishingly persistent possum family-the "experts" were no use. It took months of vigilance to finally find where they were getting in. One thing I heard about was quite simple-possums hate light-so if you can put a light in your roof cavity, might they leave? Another thing they apparently hate is flashing lights (!), so maybe one of those torches with different functions?
Just a thought...good luck.
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