The Virginia Opossum is native to the Southeastern United States and it's North America's only Marsupial. This animal class has a pouch it carries it's young in. Captian John Smith gave his ratty looking friend the name Opossum when he was discovering North America and Canada. This special little animal gets on your porch at night and spends time with your cats. They don't care if he joins in on some yummy cat food as long as they get a few pieces.
During the Great Depression and earlier part of the 1900's people would keep these "yard hogs" in small pens, fatten them up and eat them. I gag at the thought of them being my main course. A friend had one as a pet for awhile. She kept it in a cage. Jack Hanna has them on his shoulders and lets kids pet it and feed it small pieces of fruit. This is a wild animal and doesn't need to be tamed and also, it's unhygienic to eat possums because they are scavengers.
Possums main dish here in the south, yes what the possum loves to eat is persimmons. Persimmons ripen about September-November when the fruit turns orange. The fruit is a really sweet orange meat fruit with hard seeds on the inside. You can usually see these little pests up in the tree sleeping.
If you ride on Alabama's roadways, you'll always notice there are a few dead in the road. This is because the opossum is blind to daylight. They mostly roam around at night. Since they have night-eyes, oncoming cars and other automobiles are blinding to them. That's how opossums are found in the road. They leave this road blinded and go to possum heaven. Thanks for reading and have a great day.
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