Possum Busters 1

One of the local school teachers rang me, asking if I could help, she thought they had possums in the ceiling, and was worried because they seemed to holding discos in the airconditioning ducts.  So I called in to see her, and I saw the yellow tell tail signs on the ceiling, showing that not only were they holding dances up there, they were also going to the loo.  I knew they were probably also nibbling at electrical wires too, which could lead to dire consequences, so action had to be taken!

I knew I would need help (I am absolutely hopeless with ladders these days), so I called the possum expert.  In came Sue with a couple of possum traps, and the maintenance lady found an appropriate ladder.  Sue climbed up into the ceiling through a manhole, and shone her trusty torch around.  She caught the reflection of an eye, and crawled towards him.  He backed into a space where Sue couldn’t fit, so we set the trap, baited with an apple, and left it there.  Sue descended the ladder, and we went down the other end of the building and repeated the performance with the other trap.  We explained to the maintenance lady that she would need to find all the holes where the possums were going in and out, and they would all need to be plugged, once we caught the possums, otherwise they would all get back in again.  Some of the holes were pretty obvious, and she said she would find them, and plug most, and do the rest once we had started catching them.  The next day Sue and I went back to the school to find one trap had been sprung and the apple eaten, but no possum caught.  The other one contained the one Sue had seen, a big grandfather possum with one eye, and many scars.  We decided we should have him checked out by the vet before we released him, because he looked as though he had only recently lost his eye.  So Sue set the other trap again, and I took this bloke to the vets, picking up another carer on the way for assistance, and just as well I did.  We took him out of the trap, and held him firmly while the vet checked him out.  However, even though we held him firmly, he still managed to wriggle around, and almost escaped.  He started sliding round on the table, which was stainless steel;  he was growling and we could hear his claws trying to find a grip on the slippery surface, and as the pair of us carers struggled to contain him, we could see the vet backing towards the door.  At last we managed it, and the vet continued the check and pronounced him fine for release, much to everyone’s relief, I wasn’t relishing looking after this guy any longer than I had to.

So, at dusk that evening, “The Pirate”, as we called him, was released, and refused to climb the tree that the trap was next to, prefering instead to climb the fence and head back towards the school.  I wasn’t worried, because I thought all the holes had been plugged up by this, and thought he would just find another home nearby.  Next day Sue and I took that trap back to the school and set it, and found that the other one now contained another possum.  She appeared fine, so we decided she could be released at dusk.  We kept this up for several days, releasing possums as we caught them, the only difference being the days Sue couldn’t go, another helper, a policeman, would stand in.  Then after 4 possums, we caught “The Pirate” again.  So, a quick inspection of the holes was carried out.  Sure enough one had been disturbed from the inside, and that was how he had got back in.  So, the hole was replugged, and he was released again that night, and we hoped that none of the others had returned as well.  This time, when we released the possums, we sprayed them with a vegetable dye, so we would recognise them…..we knew we’d know “The Pirate”….and sure enough we realised we were catching the same ones again.  More checking of holes, and eventually after we had caught our seventh possum, all seemed peaceful at last under the school roof.  The plugs in the holes were staying secure, and we stopped catching them.  We worked out that we had really only caught four possums, just some of them twice!

One of the possums later took up residence in a small outbuilding that was used for tool storage, and eventually she was seen with a baby on her back.  None returned to wreak havoc in the main school building….