What Opossum Looks Like
About the size of a house cat; beady black eyes and paper thin ears resemble those of a bat; its sharp claws and 50 pointy teeth ; pelt soft like a cat, tapered, 8 to 12 inch scaly tail Is prehensile. Illustrations to the contrary, opossum’s tails, while adapted to wrap around objects for support or balance are too weak to allow a mature animal to hang from a tree limb.
Where Is It Found? - North into Canada, west to the Pacific Ocean. they range from southern Mexico north to approximately the Canadian line. They live in all areas of the continental U.S. except Alaska, the western Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and portions of the the Great Basin. Their life span is only two years.
Opossum’s Feeding Habits
Eating habits - Opossums are omnivores. They eat carrion, worms, eggs, snails, insects, snakes, crayfish, toads salamanders, mice, birds slugs, fruits, vegetables, garbage. Nearly always feeds at night, active between dusk and dawn. Locate food by sense of smell. During the day they sleep in a hole in the ground or in a hollow tree. They are climbers and will sometimes enter a hole in an attic wall to spend days safely sleeping under the roof.
Although they acquire a layer of fat in the fall, they neither store food nor hibernate so must eat constantly. Solitary hunters, they may forage several acres in a single night and move frequently to new locations. When food is abundant, they will hange around for more than two or three days.
