A man discovered a little pink animal alone on a used car yard in late October. He realized the small animal wouldn’t live on her own with winter approaching, so he loaded her into his car and took her to the South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (SPWRC).
Gail Barnes, executive director of SPWRC, watched on camera as the man dropped off a box at the center’s intake building. She had received a call explaining that he’d be dropping off a wild possum — but it didn’t seem that way at first. “As I was bringing the box back, this arm comes out … and it’s hairless,” Barnes told The Dodo. “And I go, ‘Oh my gosh, this is not the possum. This must be a hairless cat.’”
Safely inside, Barnes opened the box and realized that she was in fact holding a wild possum, with only a sprinkling of hair on her face and feet.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s so cold,’” Barnes said. “She was hypothermic so we had to warm her up. We put her in the incubator and got socks, heated them up, and got her temperature back up to where it was supposed to be.”
Next, Barnes and the volunteers set about helping the possum gain weight. They had no idea how long she had been without her mom, so they gave her a variety of food to snack on, and the possum happily ate it up. “If the mother knows that something is wrong with the baby they’re going to drop them off or discard them,” Barnes said. “So she probably was scared to death.”
The veterinarians discovered that the small possum’s unusual look was caused by alopecia, an auto-immune illness that causes hair loss. The possum could not be released into the wild since she lacked fur to shield her from the elements.
The center put out a call for little sweaters and pouches to keep the possum warm during the winter months, and the community happily responded. So far the little possum has received knit pouches to snuggle in and hand-me-down clothes from hairless cat owners.
In the weeks since arriving at the wildlife center, the possum has already doubled her weight, and soon she’ll be ready to be introduced to her roommate Remy.
The two small possums will live in an indoor/outdoor enclosure with plenty of room to roam and cozy dens to sleep in. The wildlife center hopes they can one day help educate people about the important role that marsupials in North America play.
“One of the most misunderstood creatures is the possum,” Barnes added. “People catch them because they don’t want them in their yard and since they have more teeth than any other animal, people think they appear archaic.” They are, nonetheless, quite useful. They devour all your insects, bugs, and snakes since they’re scavengers.”
The little possum is growing more comfortable with her caretakers every day, and is proving that against all odds she is determined to thrive.
0 Comments