There's a rustle in the Mulberry Tree
And the dogs go bark bark bark
Whatever could it be
On this night so still and dark
There’s something in the Pepper Tree
In a hollow deep and dark
Hiding where we cannot see
As the dogs go bark bark bark
We need to solve this mystery
Of what's hiding in the dark
Lying still as still can be
As the dogs go bark bark bark
One of the reasons we bought our house was the Brush-tailed Possum in a hollow in the Pepper Tree outside the house yard. The hollow is about 1.5 metres above ground level and looking out was a whiskery face with huge eyes and a pink nose. He was very cute. And we know he is a he because we got a nice shot of his rear end with the sensor camera we set up near the hollow. Our dogs are confined to the house yard so the possum can safely roam the grove of trees in the two acre property outside the house yard. He is very fond of the wild quandongs and we sometimes hear him in the mulberry tree next to the house yard, where he initially used to drive the dogs crazy but they got used to him soon enough. Sometimes though he likes to live dangerously. Like the time we found him on the kitchen bench one night and this time the dogs on sentinel duty on the front veranda were oblivious.
Not everyone likes possums and particularly people in New Zealand where Brush-Tailed Possums are an introduced pest and where interestingly they are rapidly growing into a much larger animal than their Australian cousins. That's the irony of pest species that are actively hunted. The fit survive and in a very short time the species becomes formidable. The same thing is happening with the North American Coyote and of course Australia's feral fox. Brush-tailed possums, like kangaroos, are a species that have done quite well out of the European Settlement of Australia. Dozens of mammals have become extinct but the hordes of possums in the trees and roof cavities of Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth are doing very well and drive people mad with their midnight carousing. So far we have been lucky and have not had a possum invasion in our roof space or our chimneys but it will likely happen one day. In the meantime I am very happy to coexist with our cute neighbour in his Pepper Tree hollow.
