Moving Day

(Above) A female opossum carries her litter of eight youngsters across the lawn of Clear Lake’s Iowa Regular Baptist Camp. -Photo by Lowell Washburn

Moving from one home to another is never an easy task, especially if you’re a mother with eight growing kids to look after.  

That’s the Moving Day scene that played out earlier this week as I caught a glimpse of a female opossum currently engaged in relocating her youngsters from their den in Clear Lake’s McIntosh Woods State Park to a site at the adjacent Iowa Regular Baptist Camp grounds.  I spotted the ‘possum as she made a quick dash across a broad campground lawn located near the lake shore.  The family soon disappeared into the entrance of their new digs which was located at the base of a hollow tree.

The Virginia opossum is North America’s sole representative of the marsupial family; more closely related to kangaroos and koalas than to the giant rodents they resemble.  Like their Australian cousins, female ‘possums give birth to “premature” young which immediately crawl into their mother’s pouch where they remain hidden until developed enough to make their debut in the outside world.  During midsummer, opossum youngsters learn critical survival skills while clinging to the mother’s back as she conducts nocturnal forays in search of insects, fruit, and carrion.  Although the opossum is a native inhabitant of the American forest, the creature is highly adapted to living near humans where they are attracted to garbage, bird feeders, cat food, and domestic poultry – habits which often make them equally unpopular at rural farmsteads and residential neighborhoods.

-Lowell Washburn