From friend to foe: The possum in my driveway has become a problem

One of the easiest ways to figure out which stage of life someone is in is to tell them you live in the suburbs and gauge their response. It’ll either be, “You live in the suburbs?” (derogatory) or “You live in the suburbs!” (complimentary).

I mention this only because my friendship group is split evenly between both camps: inner-city types obsessed with black mould and family-friendly folk obsessed with green spaces.

Different as they may be, the one thing they mutually agree on is that the suburbs are boring. For those who have made the move, this is part of the appeal – Safe! Reliable! Predictable! – and for those who refuse to, it’s why they’d rather die than relocate. Well, that and all the Bunnings stores.

Life in the suburbs brings with it a constant pressure to come up with things to do, including, befriending a possum. Credit: Michael Howard

Having moved to the suburbs a few years ago, I considered myself somewhere in the middle. I appreciated the suburban stability but was wary of suburban malaise, which probably explains my recent and very reckless decision to befriend a local possum.

You see, I don’t live near any bars or pubs, and all the restaurants in my area close early, so hanging out with a possum is an attractive way to pass the time each night. It’s also worth noting that as the father of a small child obsessed with animals, life in the suburbs doesn’t offer much in the way of exciting wildlife encounters. There are no lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), just dogs, cats, and ibises (oh yuck!).

So imagine our collective joy when one evening, while taking the rubbish out, my son and I spied two beady eyes staring back at us from a tree in the driveway.

I made an ‘Oh Possum’ joke to my son but he isn’t much of a Dame Edna guy.Credit: Thomas Mitchell

For a moment, no one moved, paralysed by mutual respect (or fear?) before the possum completely freaked out, ran up the tree, dropped the carrot it was eating, skittishly returned for the carrot and eyeballed us once more before disappearing into the night.

To a child, this level of chaos is fascinating, which naturally led to a long and confusing conversation that ended with me trying to explain to a toddler what nocturnal means.

At this point, I should’ve said something like, “OK, the possum has gone to sleep now!” aware that to feed a possum once is to encourage it forever. Instead, I said: “Should we go and get another carrot?” And so we did.

Night after night, this became a ritual. I would return from work with a bag of carrots, and we would wedge one in the tree for our new friend (a young male common brushtail possum, thank you, Google) and wait for him to surface – a wholesome exchange between man and marsupial.

According to the Reddit thread R/Possums, this was absolutely the wrong thing to do because possums are very territorial and shouldn’t be tamed.

Admittedly, I had experienced this firsthand growing up: a family of wild, shrieking possums setting up shop inside our roof, much to the frustration of my parents, who spent thousands of dollars having them “rehomed” (dumped miles away in a park).

But our possum wasn’t like that, he seemed loveable and charming, cuddly even, the kind of possum Mem Fox had in mind when writing Possum Magic. And anyway, given the possum was already in his own home, there was nothing to worry about; we were dropping off groceries.

Mem Fox’s book Possum Magic gave me an unrealistic idea of the potential for possum friendship.

For a while, the system worked well. I felt confident that a strong bond had been established, and people in the building called me “the possum guy”, a nickname I quite enjoyed.

But things took a turn when my son decided to eat the carrot one night rather than share it. Have you ever seen a possum hiss and growl at a two-year-old? It’s unpleasant, but not as unpleasant as being stalked down your own driveway by a possum you once considered a friend.

The following night, the possum returned, this time with two buddies. Word had clearly spread, and being outnumbered changed the whole dynamic of the agreement; it became less like a brush with nature and more like a debt to be paid.

On the advice of every person I spoke to and every possum forum I visited, I stopped feeding them immediately, which only appeared to anger the group. Leaving the house meant wondering if a gang of rightfully upset possums would be waiting for me, my Safe! Reliable! Predictable! suburb now a prison of my own making.

Eventually, the only option was to call WIRES and admit what I’d done, which led to a polite-but-firm lecture from a lady named Christine, who had clearly had this conversation too many times to count. “Firstly, stop feeding them. Secondly, buy some floodlights and possum-repellent spray; that should do the trick. Are you close to a Bunnings?”

Of course, I am Christine; I live in the suburbs.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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