Sunday, July 4, 2010

Pygmy Possums.....Who Knew

Holy Moly- the past few days have confounded me with some amazing discoveries.  First --, I nearly fell out of my chair the other nite when I saw Pogo the Possum gobbling away at the porch buffet and thought I was seeing double.  (with my strange vision anything is possible).  After pressing my nose to the glass that separated us I realized that there was not one Pogo but TWO !  And they are identical twins no less so all this time I do not know which one has been the object of my Possum Watch.  I now suspect that instead of observing Pogo on multiple appearances during an evening it most probably was his sibling who came on the second visit.  Sadly. in my eagerness to get a  better view of them chomfing away at the kitty kibble, I frightened one of the Pogos away and consequently spent the rest of the evening wondering if I dreamed it all.  I have not seen both of them together since that nite, but I am sure there are at least two......for the time being I will have to call them Pogo-1 and Pogo-2......  sorry about that.  Until I can see them together again and can examine them for distinguishing features or differences I can't do any better than that.  (If there were three of them I would be tempted to steal Walt Kelly's wonderful names and call them Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred.)

AND before my head stopped whirling over that discovery I found myself puzzled over the fact that, over the several months that I have been watching this delightful (baby?) critter, it does not appear that he has grown a single smidgeon.  Considering the amount of food he scarfs down on every visit this is simply not possible so I was driven to Google to look up "pygmy possums" to find out if there could be any such thing.......and, lo and behold, there sure as hell are.....a large selection of same including one called a Vampire Possum which rattled me mightily because of my encounter last week with what I am sure was Vampire mosquito.  I have not been able to find that site again, dammit, because I would dearly love to copy a picture or two.....I did manage to grab one image of one of the varieties and I will try to paste it in here somewhere.

   

There he is.....looking a lot like my Pogos.  Needless to say, there will be more to come about these wonderful little creatures. (apparently these miniature varieties make wonderful pets and I even watched a video on Utube showing cats and pygmy possums mingling and cohabiting........no I am not going to go there.....my life is complicated enough already.

The other shocker happened last night when I was peering out  at some traffic around the porch buffet and I saw what looked like Mamma Raccoon standing up on her hind legs and grinning her raccoon grin which bares all the teeth trying to frighten me away  (Poor misguided thing......if she only knew that it  makes her look so adorable you just want to hug her.)  I promptly hid behind a chair and tried to sneak a look around the furniture to see what she was eating and I saw....(gasp)......3 babies munching away.  Those of you who have followed me for a while will remember that my raccoon adventures started just about a year ago when Mamma brought her 4 babies to eat me out of house and home.  After they grew up I would see only one at a time and I never knew which one of the 5 it was.  Now it appears that Mom or perhaps one of her daughters has continued the tradition.   OMG......remembering how much kibble those young 'uns went through I am not sure if I can afford this newest generation.  Sigh.  Well, at least I do not have to crochet them afghans.

So, if you have been wondering what I have  been up to now you know.....up to no good, as they say.  Old Lo is ear lobe deep in critters.......... again.

9 comments:

  1. It is fun to watch them, but you are right they will continue to eat and reproduce like crazy. Be careful or you might have a population explosion.

    I don't blame you for not wanting to add a wild creature to your indoor population. My Sweetie insisted several years ago that we keep the squirrel we were bottle feeding, instead of having her rehabbed into the wild, and we have regretted it. Wild critters are cute but destructive, and belong in the wild.

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  2. How exciting! I would love to see all the animals you have in your back yard, especially the baby raccoons. We have a fox round our way but he is staying away at the moment as he has all of the food he needs in these lovely sunny days. Looking forward to hearing more and seeing more pictures! :-)

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  3. Hi Lo, Well the wild critters give you lots of entertainment..and us too, I hope you can scrape together enough cat food to keep this newest batch of raccoons alive:)

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  4. I adore possums! We were really lucky to have one in our yard for a while. He completely got rid of all the snails! Then Harry mistook him for a chew toy. Very sad.

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  5. You and your "animal kingom" is amazing, Lo!
    Cute little critters,,,You sent me a couple of pictures of the racoons a couple of years ago, so it looks like they have taken up permanent residence at "lois's Refuge." I think it is the sweetest thing, and look forward to more pictures.....Love you

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  6. We had the same issue, except with stray cats. I was feeding a black kitty, whom I named Midnight, and was amazed at how hungry she was. Imagine my surprise when I looked out the window one day and discovered not one but two black kitties on the front walk. (Try telling black cats apart.)

    I named the second one Panther because he had such a prominent jaw and he sadly disappeared a few months ago. I think he got into a tangle with some raccoons who were flushed out of the sewers by the heavy rains.

    But Midnight still comes around morning and evening, not interested in loving and skritches yet, but happy to be fed.

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  7. Critters! I love it! Bun Bun has been happily nibbling away at my peas, but I'm totally okay with that. I saw him with another bunny a month or so ago, so I don't know if I'm going to have baby bunnies in my yard or not. I've been watching!

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  8. What a fun read! And wasn't Walt Kelly something? Do vampires with bad karma become mosquitos?

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  9. :)

    Do you accept kibble donations?

    That is one cute 'possum!

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