The Opossum appreciation thread

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I had to remove my bowl of food for the Possum and Raccoon in my area. Instead of them, a black feral-ish cat staked a claim in my yard and beat kitty up and ran her off. I had to turn on all the outside lights until she finally came back. She stays inside at night and goes outside during the day. She's a lover, not a fighter. When something like this happens, it scares her for a long time.

Possum pick up their bedding and carry it with their tails, until they get it back to the spot they're sleeping in.

We have a lot of possums or opossums in my neck of the woods. They are an interesting animal for Aspies because they replicate one of our conditions - panic attacks.

The way our human brains are designed it is like having three individual computer processors that work together. In every situation one of the brains has to be in control. These brains are the core (like an infant's brain), the middle brain (fight or flight), and the outer brain (social brain). When we are threatened control collapses inward. The social or outer brain is in charge. If the social brain cannot figure a way out of the threat by interacting with society, it collapses down to a fight or flight response. If neither brain can resolve the issue then it further collapses down to the core. Think of the core as an infant that can neither walk or talk. This core brain has been referred to that similar to a fish brain. When a fish encounters a threat it remains motionlessly still and hopes the threat will go away if it doesn't move. This effect is called "tonic immobility". One might use the word frozen to death. If a panic attack goes deep enough then a human may curl up in a fetal position, become motionless and they lose the ability to communicate.

Possums do this so often that the phrase "playing dead like a possum" was created. [Playing dead is an involuntary response on the part of the opossum. The stress of the confrontation facing the opossum causes him to go into shock. This shock induces a comatose state that can last from 40 minutes to four hours.] I have witnessed this quite often. When they are immobile, it is very difficult to determine if they are dead or alive. You can approach them and move their bodies around with a stick. It is almost like "rigor mortis" has set in. So you go about looking for a shovel to bury it. When you finally find the shovel you come back and it is gone. It very slowly woke up and walked off while you were gone.

Happens to me all the time.