A Plethora of Pilfering Possums

I have lived in my apartment for close on 2 years, and in that time I have been growing some lovely veggies in my little enclosed courtyard. I have also enjoyed watching the wildlife that lives in the bushland that extends to the back wall of my courtyard, but I have never had any problems with any of that wildlife coming into my garden and eating my plants. Up until a couple of months ago, that is.

I had quite a good veggie patch planted in my boxes and had apple cucumbers, squash, and zucchini all finally fruiting after a very late start to the season. I spent a couple of nights away at the King Sol House, and when I got back it was to find that every single one of my baby cucumbers, zucchinis, and squash had been eaten. I was quite devastated, but I figured that they had eaten everything they were going to eat so I didn't bother doing any animal proofing. A little while later I noticed that since they had eaten all the really yummy things, they had moved on to the less palatable options. The leaves on my strawberry plants started to disappear, followed by my herbs (except the rosemary and chives), and then almost all the pigface that I had been carefully propagating from cuttings I took in Stanley last year. So, I started working on doing some possum-proofing. I spent a couple of hours one day assembling chicken wire and irrigation house into a protective cage to place around the veggie plants. I was pretty proud of my work, and I decided to test it out, so I put enticing food inside the cage, where I was planning to replant some veggies, and set my wildlife camera up to see what happened.

I was very frustrated the next morning to find that a possum had found its way inside without much difficulty. It did have a harder time finding its way back out, but it eventually managed it.

So, I spent another hour modifying my protective cage, placed some more tasty morsels inside and reset the camera (at a better angle this time). This time a mother and juvenile brushtail possum came into the garden and climbed all over the cage trying to find a way in. They were in and out of the garden for over an hour attempting to get into the cage, but they didn't manage it. I did notice, though, that with an adult possum sitting on top of the cage, it bows quite a bit and a possum might be able to eat the top of any veggies that I plant so I'm going to be a little bit more modification to make it a bit less flexible.

I was about to stop going through all the photos when I saw this one

An adult (and quite a large one) ring tail possum! Ring tail numbers have decreased so much that they are quite hard to find usually, and I never expected to see one in my one backyard. I have set my camera up in the bushland behind my place quite a few times before and I have never seen one there so I didn't think we had any. I was so excited that I had to call Mum so that I had someone to tell.