| For a dozen years—in all seasons—we have been enchanted by the running of the Ringtail possums on our tin roof at night. |
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| Theirs is a joyous beat as the family is coming or going from a feast. They always hurry, for there are enemies everywhere. Especially dangerous is open ground. Scrambling ahead of a thunderstorm I have seen them backlit by lightning like riders on the storm. |
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| And yes, we have cursed the little tooth marks on our only apple, or the ruinous bite into a fat rosebud, or grape, but really there is plenty to eat for everyone. And nary a drop of poison has been laid in our garden. We planted more fruiting natives and made water available and fell in love with the drumroll of tiny feet. It was the sound of home. |
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| It was ever a thrill to catch a glimpse of one in the fading light; a creamy-bellied, brown, cat-sized critter with babies on her back, swaying with the load as she skidded on gum leaves, grey and slippery as aluminium, her ears rounded and her eyes bright and kind as a buddha’s. |
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| The Ringtails (or Ringies), have well-worn pathways, what have been mammalian highways for millennia, I suppose, as they nightly climb the trees, tip-toe along the fences, fleeing across the rusty roofs and up into one of the tall palms that houses their dray— a spherical nest made of shredded grass where they all hunker down. |
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| Tree hollows would be nice, desirable even, but these burn in fireplaces in their thousands. A possum is wise to build a dray in these days of habitat clearing. |
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| So over the years years they’ve built two homes—one with sea views—at either end of the garden. |
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| A Powerful Owl will eat 300 Ringtail possums in a lifetime. He will slice the head off with his aptly named powerful talons. Their other sworn enemy—the afeared Diamond Python—is an ambush artist. He will lie curled on the pathway or in the trees frequented by the hapless Ringies, and wait. And wait |
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| The possum who meets this square-jawed snake, is doomed, as we saw recently, when the embrace to the death was efficiently enacted in the bromiliads, with flashes of green diamond and a cream belly entwined by black scales making a disturbing picture of nature ‘red in tooth and claw’. |
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| Frightened eyes stared out from the dray. |
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| The possum family did not did not fight back. They have no weapons. They did not plot and seethe and plan revenge. They packed up and vanished into the night, squeezing into a crowded habitat deemed preferable to being squeezed to death; finding asylum. Somewhere. Lucky ours is a roomy backyard full of pristine coastal heath, and not a town or city or landscape scarred with roads. |
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| A family of possums who has lived here for generations was suddenly gone. The python had strung itself between two ferns as it digested the visible lump in its belly. Then shambled off to the Frenchman’s place. But the Ringtails could not live with the terror.
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| Now there is no beat of feet on the roof. A possum expert (my sister in law, actually) says they’ve probably relocated due to the presence of the python. They might return. In time. For now the drays are empty. The strawberry guavas are left untouched; the roses bloom, unmolested. |
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| At night, I can hear the silence of the possums. |
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| And I miss them. |
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| . . . there’s a killer on the road . . . riders in the storm . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS-af9Q-zvQ |
The Departure Lounge 
Beautiful, descriptive and evocative writing, Barb. Those poor little possums!
It reminded me of a possum I saw regularly when I used to jog in Centennial park years ago. He slept in the same hollow of a Moreton Bay fig tree for years. All that was visible as I ran past was a fat, furry bottom, almost the same colour as the bark. Sadly, when I went back recently, the tree had either fallen down or been removed and I still wonder where the possum went.
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Oh I love when other people yell their possum stories. The python even has a fan!
Thanks, as always M. I am writing about Bob Ellis’s passing. His funeral tomorrow and another place I cannot be but in spirit.
x Barb
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Ooooohhh Barb that really bought a tear to my eye and one I understand as we had trees that a family of possums would swing down of branches to eat the grapefruit growing outside a carport by our bedroom I could look out at night on a low lying roof and see them when the familiar thud came most nights and secretly watch them, it was a real thrill to see Mum with babe on her back and a huge male all jumping down, they used the branch as a catapult and would come and go….then a storm came and broke the tree line …I haven’t seen the possums again but like to think they are still around somewhere…so beautiful sister I too know the silence you speak off and love the fact we both love nature with all she throws at us xxx
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Cath, that’s so lovely. Thank you for sharing your neat possum story.
You will have possums in your new home, I just know it! And they’ll be safe 🙂
xxx
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