an online column by Carmel Bird
No. 12
December 1998
Previous columns
POSSUM
Every fine night for seven years there has been a ringtail possum reclining in the Cecile Brunner rose over my front door. Calmly the animal gnaws on the shoots and buds. Every morning I sweep up the droppings from the path, and sadly inspect the chewed-off buds from other rose bushes nearby. I believe possums build about five nests around the place, within their home range, calling in on each nest as the mood takes them. One of the nests made by my possum is right in the middle of the Cecile Brunner, safe from predators. Safe from me, the big predator.
Sometimes I go out in the dark and talk to the possum. I admire its enormous satin black eyes, its pure and snowy underbelly. It stares me down and chirrups, stretches out beside the nest which is about as big as a football made from twigs and sheets of bark.
'You realise,' I say, that if we were not in a Melbourne suburb, but in Tasmania instead, I could grow roses like nobody's business, and I could shoot you and eat you. Or they could cull you and sell you as a delicacy on an overseas market. People would make cloaks from your skin.' Is the possum smiling? The smirk of the protected animal. And this possum is not just one creature, it is a tribe, a horde. I say 'the possum' and generally I see only one, but in truth I mean 'the possums'. Every year they strip bare the avocado tree, and chew off almost all the rosebuds.
I've heard of French sheep being fed lavender to perfume their meat. Imagine possum, flavoured with rose and avocado.
Take one young possum. Feed on rose petals and avocado leaves. Shoot. Skin, gut and behead. Marinate in a very dry white wine. Stuff body cavity with mushrooms, garlic, salt, thyme, breadcrumbs and butter. Sew up and place in baking dish with wine, olive oil, potatoes and onions. Cover with lid. Bake in slow oven for two hours, basting meat from time to time. Serve with a light Hunter Valley rose. Chilled.
This is not to be. There is a territorial and property dispute going on here, but judgement has already been made in the possum's favour. What I have to do is find a way of coming to terms with the facts. So we more or less live together, but it is really in charge, and has an unequal share of the fruits and flowers. Its appetite is apparently insatiable. Whatever takes its fancy, in all the gardens hereabouts, it will devour. My attempts to put it off, following every known and exotic routine, have failed. The boiled quassia chips, supposed to be the last word in possum repellant, made no difference.
If I walk under the Cecile Brunner late at night, and forget to stop and look up, the possum twitters to remind me who is boss, and grins at me when I respond. Having conquered my beloved rosebush, can it now conquer my heart?
Over the years I have bemoaned the fact that I can't grow roses, and people have not only come round with blooms from their own rose bushes, but have described all the ways they know for getting rid of possums. There was a time when it was still legal to have possums caught in cages and carted away to the hills. A man would bring a cage and we would bait it with apples and put it on the roof. This didn't work out. Every time there were one or two fresh possums in the cage by morning. There is no shortage of possums. You take some away and make room for some more.
Gradually I found myself listening to the descriptions of all the methods and strategies - lights, hoses, nets, razor wire, pepper, kerosene, dogs, cats - even putting out special banquets of chopped apple and carrots - and then trying them out mentally. I would think over the idea of, say, the kerosene, and before putting it into action, I would abandon it.
Early on I wished the possum would get tired of being here and go away. Then I went in for fantasies about scaring it off, then of actually killing it. But if I killed one, I'd only acquire another. Then after a while I realised I was only toying with the idea of getting rid of it. Subtle changes were going on in the relationship between me and the possum.
I began to study possums in an informal way. My interest was aroused. possums became a sort of fascination.
They come from the family Petauridae , and the Latin name of the common ringtail is pseudocheirus peregrinus. The generic name refers to the false hand of the animal's forefoot on which the first two toes oppose the remaining three to give a pincer action.The peregrinations of my lot involve a skip down the electricity cable and then a scamper across the roof to the yellow rose which tries to climb on the back verandah. A quick chomp on the yellow rose and off to the avocado, then zip back along the fence to the nest known as a 'drey' in the Cecile Brunner. Settle in for a delicous dessert. The molars have high, sharp and convoluted crowns and act as a very efficient cutting and grinding mill. I know. Their diet consists mainly of leaves, supplemented by flowers and fruit. You bet. The length of the head and body is 300 - 350 mm. The length of the curling, prehensile tail, with its friction pad, used as a fifth limb, is the same. The weight is 700 - 1100 g. Ringtails are widespread and have not been adversely affected by European settlement of Australia. Hmmm. They are 'familiar to many residents of the eastern mainland of Australia as a persistent thief of rosebuds'.Their status, the books say, is 'common'.
Someone told me that an absolutely certain way to get rid of the possum was to paint the leaves of the Cecile Brunner with Vicks Vaporub. I imagined myself with a paintbrush, like the playing-cards in Alice , daubing each little leaf with Vicks. The picture had a certain lunatic appeal. I did nothing.
And now I realise that the Cecile Brunner, although not flowering as I would wish, is running rampant and starting to block the spouting. Soon I will have to cut back the rosebush. I must be very careful not to disturb the possum's nest, for it will be a sorry night when I listen for the chirrup, scan the branches, and the possum is not there.
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