#2 | Posted by RightisTrite

Our cat's a friendly guy who'd eat himself to 38 pounds if we let him, but we don't. He gets along with our 3 dogs and plays a lot with one of them (chase, taking turns).

We've had more than a couple opossums take up residence around our house or in the basement when it gets cold. Several years ago, just before what turned out to be a bitterly cold winter for her, a mama gave birth to 10 joeys in our basement. She got through to it from a crawl space in another section of our house.

We fed them all winter with tuna and dog food mostly (which our vet recommended) and left fresh water. In the spring, when the joeys were old enough to fend for themselves, I trapped mama and the rest of them and relocated them to a copse of woods behind our house. The runt returned three times, so I took her to a wildlife rescue where she lived out the rest of her life by a beautiful creek behind their medical building. Staff at Walden's Puddle told me she came up on the porch every afternoon for a treat. Guess she liked people. She was really cute both as a youngster and juvenile.

I've trapped and relocated others who've shown up around here to a beautiful lake minutes from my house that doesn't have any residences on it and tens of thousands of acres of surrounding woods with everything they need.

Most people aren't aware opossums only live an average of 2 years. They aren't aggressive at all, carry no diseases, and are really neat creatures all the way around. America's only marsupials.