The anthropology of possum-banding trees and possum-hating humans

Dame Edna would often greet her audiences with a cheery “Hello possums!”. When I first heard this greeting I thought it was mildly amusing. It wasn’t until I became a home owner, or more particularly a garden owner, that I realised what an insult the good Dame was aiming at us. Recently I have taken to introducing the subject of possums in conversations with old and new acquaintances. I’ve found that it is a great leveler. Personal experiences and strong views abound. Doubtless, there must be possum lovers amongst us, but I have yet to meet one. If they do exist, they must keep their sympathies hidden, and for bloody good reason. In our last two houses we have fought an ongoing and losing war with these bastard creatures. They strip magnolias, roses and any other plant that we have nurtured, fed pruned and cared for. They break branches and strip vines. They run around on the roof and break their way in to the roof cavity through the smallest spaces, and then proceed to treat that space as their own personal en suite where they defecate, urinate and fornicate. They are bastards! I have heard people say “Oh, you must learn to live with possums. They have rights too”. Oh, really? A perusal of authoritative websites reveals ad nausea what could only be described as the possum Bill of Rights. It states that a possum found in your ceiling may be removed provided that it is released no more than a few metres from where it was caught. Pardon? Yep, you got it! These sites also point you in the direction of professional possum people [PPPs] who for a payment, will remove them from your ceiling and release them in the garden or thereabouts. They will then come back the following week, and the week after that and so on. For a further fee, the PPPs will also install unsightly plastic discs and tubes on your electricity and telephone cables to impede the bastards from accessing your property. They can also install spikes along the fence railings. Apparently it is unacceptable to catch and release possums in some nearby reserve, but it is quite alright to impale them. Go figure! It was suggested to me that possums hate the smell of human urine. Simply pee in a bottle, fit a spray to the bottle, and away you go. It was explained that it is far tidier if this job is delegated to the male of the house, notwithstanding the political incorrectness of this separation of duties . For extra effectiveness, he suggests consumption of asparagus beforehand. He said it works a treat but does not do much for neighbourhood relations and can discourage the local postman. Col, a friend of mine, recently became so infuriated by the bastards that he enquired at his local hardware store as to the availability of a possum trap. The store owner’s eyes lit up with excitement. Surely, my friend thought, here is a kindred spirit, and he was right. A trap was immediately produced and its workings explained enthusiastically, and with great clarity. However, the store owner also pointed out with a “nudge nudge wink wink” the severe legal restrictions that applied to the trapping of possums. Col said, and I quote directly, “I don’t give a stuff! I want to declare war on the bastards!”. At this stage the store owner was approaching a state of ecstasy. He said “Well, in that case, you should be aware that it is no use catching them and releasing them in the next street. The bastards will always find their way back. You need to take them a few kilometres away. Even then, they might come back.” He went on to say “what I do, is spray their tail with white paint before I release them. That way, if I catch one featuring a white painted tail, I know I haven’t taken the bastard far enough from my house”. You guessed it! Col not only bought the trap, but a can of spray paint as well. He set the trap each night and the following morning would take his catch, still in the trap, to a recreational park and quietly, and secretively release the bastard near a clump of trees to which it would scamper and climb. One morning he did encounter a difficult problem. Having set the trap the previous night, he forgot about it as he rushed to get to the airport the next morning. At 30,000 feet approaching Sydney, he remembered! On landing, Col rang his wife and asked her to check the trap. She did and reported that the trap contained the biggest possum she had ever seen, and it was not happy. He explained that she would need to put the trap in the boot of her car, drive to the park, and secretly release it. Many expletives followed. Finally she agreed and proceeded to the said park in a southerly direction. She waited until there were no pedestrians in sight, opened the boot and opened the cage. Col forgot to tell her that she needed to take the cage out of the car first. What happened next was to be expected. The bastard came out of the cage and hid in the far darkest reaches of the boot. She prodded it with sticks and swore at it profusely, much to the amusement of pedestrians and cyclists who, by then had started to appear. A classic Basil Fawlty moment! All in all, over two months Col caught several possums and none of them had white tails. And it was good! Well it was good until he realised that as soon as he removed one bastard from his property, another passing possum would see the vacancy sign and move in with extended family. In the end he surrendered to the endless supply of reinforcements that the enemy possessed. Col was out walking on Saturday morning with his wife. He tells me that on a busy corner he spied a possum that had been run over by a car. “It was as flat as a frisbee and a beautiful sight” he said. The world is in turmoil. We have financial meltdown, unsustainable government debt levels, unaffordable housing, climate change and so on. These are second order issues. The politician who says [to paraphrase Sarah Palin] “cull, baby, cull!” has got my vote.