Melissa Stanley of the Richmond Wildlife Center with Rosaleigh the opossum
Becky Young could tell right away something was wrong. The opossum in her yard off Old Gun Road that evening was acting odd, walking as if it were hurt. But before she could get a closer look, it had fled into the dark.
Young has a soft spot for opossums. She grew up in wooded Midlothian with a neighborhood opossum that befriended the family cat — the two had bonded over a shared love of cat food and became so chummy they would nap intertwined, nose to tail.
She’s been a fan of opossums since. So as the sun fell the next evening, she watched and waited until the opossum wandered into her gated garden. She closed the gate to keep it inside. It clearly was weak, and it nestled in a quiet spot in a covered breezeway. Young could see a wound on its face. It had been shot. Time to call in the experts.
Young knows that opossums freak some people out. All those teeth. Those ratty snouts. Those hairless tails. Google “opossum” (or “possum,” a similar species from Australia), and you’ll find reams of ferocious-looking photos, teeth bared mid-snarl.
These images are misleading. Opossums may look like a cross between a rat and a crocodile, but they are among the world’s most benign creatures. Their 50 teeth are used for nothing more than snacking on bugs, grain and fruit. Their only defenses? Hissing and drooling. If those fail, their last recourse is to collapse into unconsciousness — literally fainting at the sight of danger.
Lately, more people are coming around to Young’s perspective. Millennials have made Instagram stars out of fuzzy, pink-nosed opossums like Sesame (216,000 followers) and Gilbert (152,000 followers). Richmond’s celebrated L’Opossum restaurant has adopted the animal’s image as its own.
This is good news to Melissa Stanley. A wildlife rehabilitator and the founder and executive director of the Richmond Wildlife Center, Stanley has worked with innumerable opossums. The creatures are the wildlife center’s most commonly admitted patients, and they are some of Stanley’s favorites.
“Once they figure out that we’re helping them, they quiet down immediately,” she says. “They’re super sweet. I like to say they are the grandmas and grandpas of the neighborhood. They can tell when somebody’s being good to them, and they’re good right back.”
Contrast this to raccoons or squirrels, which are aggressive and violent even when being cared for. When treating them, Stanley says, “you better be ready. Suit up!”
Most opossum injuries Stanley has seen are caused by dog attacks and, especially, cars. Opossums have weak eyesight. That, combined with their slow, clumsy waddle, makes them especially vulnerable when crossing streets.
Opossums were here long before cars or roads or people. Researchers differ on whether what we call opossums developed 65 million years ago, making them contemporaries of the dinosaurs, or 20 million, a mere 17 million years before humanity.
They got their name from the first European settlers in Virginia. In 1607, Captain John Smith wrote of the “aposoum,” borrowing a Powhatan term that means “white animal.” Every opossum in North America is officially a Virginia opossum, Didelphis virginiana.
Opossums seem immune to rabies, possibly because their low body temperature is inhospitable to the virus. (Opossums that look confused or disoriented are probably injured or have gone blind, Stanley says.) According to many reports, they eat thousands of ticks a week, though recent research has cast doubt on this. Opossums definitely eat snakes and are all but immune to venom: A peptide in their blood is being explored as a treatment for snakebite.
Rosaleigh heads to her enclosure for a meal.
At Stanley’s wildlife center, a modest leased compound in Chesterfield County with a handful of sheds and animal shelters, lives a docile opossum named Rosaleigh.
Rosaleigh was a foundling, the only survivor of her litter. Though by law opossums cannot be pets, they can be kept by rehabilitators if it is not safe for them to be released. Due to a poor infant diet — her initial rescuers did not know better — Rosaleigh’s bones did not develop normally: Her mouselike paws are disfigured and splayed, and she has hip dysplasia.
Now she lives at the center, enjoying elaborate meals featuring nuts, berries, fruit, vegetables, worms, eggs and the occasional pinkie mouse. Rosaleigh has visited area classrooms to educate children. She accepts this, though being nocturnal she would prefer to sleep, and she is grouchy about having her pouch opened for display.
Opossums are famously the continent’s only native marsupial. Their pouches, slitlike pink openings in their bellies with the ability to clamp tight like an eyelid, can hold up to a dozen larvalike newborns that crawl like inchworms into this warm haven, attach to their mother’s nipples like feeding tubes and develop there.
At about 3 years old, Rosaleigh is elderly; in the wild, most opossums live for one or two years. Stanley recently discovered Rosaleigh has become completely blind, yet she toddles cheerily around her shelter, snatching pecans (her favorite) from a dish and hanging out in her tidy doghouse-style hideaway. Rosaleigh has found a good life.
The opossum Becky Young found was not so lucky. Young had called Stanley for help that night after isolating the hurt creature. Stanley found that someone had shot the opossum repeatedly in the face and hindquarters. Stanley did her best, but the wounds were too severe. The opossum died.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Young says. “She was just out there trying to scratch out a living, and someone shoots her. Who would do that?”
This was a few years back. Ever since, Young has made it her mission to spread the word about opossums. She kept the bullet Stanley removed from the fatal wound — a reminder of how some people act toward opossums. On daily dog walks around her neighborhood, she lets people know how gentle they are, how misunderstood. To her surprise, she’s found neighbors increasingly receptive.
“The overwhelming number of people are supportive,” Young says. “I’ve had some lovely conversations about opossums.”
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