Advanced lessons in possum disposal

Here’s a possum control method I’ll bet you’ve never thought of - invite an army-trained marksman around for dinner then, when you’re having pre-dinner drinks and the dogs go crazy because they’ve seen a possum, send him outside with a gun. 

In this case, the possum made it past the dogs and clambered onto the roof where it mistakenly thought it was safe and peered over the edge to watch the cavorting dogs. 

One tidy gunshot later, the possum was dead while poor shotgun-shy Kate the dog raced inside and attempted to climb onto my lap while I was perched on a bar stool. 

Disposal via sharp shooter proved simpler than getting rid of the possum which, unbeknown to us, had settled into the house.

Late one evening I closed the door to the back upstairs terrace - it had been open for several days. Late that night after walking upstairs, I found myself eye-to-eye with a possum which had been coming and going to his nest in what we quaintly call our ‘painting room’, i.e. it’s filled with unmentionable clutter. 

By the time the farmer and his gun came to the rescue, the possum had returned to its day-time hideaway. It was curtains when it emerged the next night; the farmer was ready with the gun.

Another possum who’d made this room its home was shot one evening after he jumped from the terrace to a nearby banana palm where he sat blinking in the torchlight. 

Possums also make homes out of leaves on the roof. We hear them after they make navigation errors and slide down the steep roof then tumble to the ground. It’s no big deal as they’re almost indestructible.

One day the farmer was on the roof with a guy who sells mesh to keep leaves out of guttering when they encountered a possum which nimbly avoided them, flew through the air, ducked past the dogs and fled to live another day. 

Pity our sharp shooter friend wasn’t here; he’d have got it in mid air with one well-placed shot.