Teddi Encounters A New Critter (Opposum)

Virginia Opposum (Didelphis virginiana) 

Teddi, Our German Shepherd/Rottweiler

Sunday night when we got home from our travel up north, I went to check our traps (mousetraps) in the basement.  I expected to see the trap simply flipped over on top of the furnacing ducting above. Instead I found a mouse caught with his hand in the "cookie jar" lying in the middle of the basement floor.  That would have been quite a fall from the ducting overhead. As I looked closer I could see he was still alive.  Dang it, I hadn't counted on this!  I expect the hard lever to snap its necks the way nature intended with a mousetrap.  Since I don't know if this just happened or how long he's been there or how close to death he may be, I decide I don't want to risk being bitten.  I went to get a plastic baggie and then scooped up the mouse and mousetrap all in one move.  I took it outside to my husband who was shoveling snow and ask him to take this critter to put him out of his misery.  I'm thinking squashing his head with a hammer or something more humane -- quick and over in a split-second.  Instead my husband took the baggie, walked across the road to the ditch and released the disabled, near-death mouse into a pile of snow.  Then he came back, handed me the baggie with the empty trap inside.  He said, "He'll either die from his wounds, freeze to death or get eaten by something else."   I replied astonished, "I know, that's why I wanted a quick and painless end for him and that's why I gave him to you to take care of.  I could have done THAT myself."   Keep in mind this tiny, dead critter has now become part of the food chain for some other critter. This is where it gets interesting.

Two nights later my husband and I were standing outside on the porch.  Our dog, Teddi had wondered off to do her business.  It was dark enough that we could hardly see her clearly but there was enough light that we noticed she had crossed the road to the ditch where the mouse had been left for dead. Teddi's boundries around our acreage end at the road but she was across the road and obviously mesmerized by something because she wouldn't respond to our demands to return inside the yard.  I can't imagine that she had encountered that mouse, who was long since dead and probably already something's dinner.

Although we couldn't see it from the porch we later discovered that Teddi encountered a Virginia Opossum, a common native to the Long Point biosphere we live in.  This was news to us.  I expected we might see a Racoon or two but I hadn't figured on a Opposum.  The funny thing is I think this critter may have found the dead mouse.  An interesting twist is that the Opposum kind of looks like a giant mouse in some ways.

Teddi wouldn't come when we called her so my husband went back inside, got his boots on, grabbed her leash and went to get her.  Teddi was now standing in the middle of the road just a few feet beyond our property starring down the critter.  She wasn't budging and neither was the Opposum.  We think it might have been a young one because it put up no fight and Teddi, who I thought might have tried to grab it and shake it like one of her stuffed toys, was only observing the critter with no threat at all.  I know these critters can be aggressive if cornered so its probably best that it was out in the open and that Teddi was only being curious. She had never seen one before so she didn't know what to think about it.

It was interesting enough to blog about it so stay tuned for there is sure to be more than one kind of critter we will probably encounter living at Green Acres.