Can i kill possum

Do you still want to reach for that bottle? The main ingredient in antifreeze is something called Ethylene Glycol. This smells lovely and tastes almost as good, which is why small children and animals tend to be attracted to it. However, when ingested, this has some very nasty side effects. Firstly, depression will occur.

Shortly after this, the sufferer will experience breathing difficulties as well as heart problems. This will be followed by damage to the brain, kidney failure, and in the unfortunate cases — death!

It takes just two ounces of Ethylene Glycol to kill a dog, only one teaspoon to kill a cat, and just two very small table spoons to kill a child. Think about it logically — is it really worth the risk? I barely pierced its skin. If I had been thinking, I would have sharpened the knife first, but now I was just committed to using the wrong tool for the job.

It was terrible. I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, grunting and screeching a little with the effort. At one point, the possum grabbed onto the knife with its teeth and had enough life left to gnaw at the tape with such ferocity I thought it would wrest the knife from the broomstick. After about 15 minutes of jabbing, extracting, wriggling the spear and my body back into position, finding a good angle, and trying again, the possum emitted a stench so bad I almost barfed.

The poor creature breathed its last, and went totally limp. I saw its blood on the knife and some of its guts in the mud. It was 4 am. I threw my spear into the grass, and collapsed onto the ground. I was too tired to deal with the carcass. It would have to wait until morning. I woke up the next day, late. Bleary-eyed and weak from the night before. My body ached. There was no time to make three lunches and deal with the mess in the backyard before work.

All day at work, all I could think about was how terrible the sopping wet, dead possum was going to smell, lying in a puddle of fetid water and baking in the hot sun for eight hours. When we got home, the odor hit me before I even reached the backyard.

But what I found was worse than the stink of fifty New York City dumpsters in the dead of summer. The dead possum was still there, but crawling around it were the live bodies of her eight offspring. They had been hiding in her pouch, probably nursing throughout the entire incident the night before.

I thought the possum was big, but not pregnant big. My heart sank. The babies were tiny, helpless, and sneezing—the only sound possum joeys can make when in distress. Their bodies, totally covered with hair, were about the size of mice. Eight tiny tails. Sixteen bright pink ears. The buds of four hundred teeny-tiny, white teeth, pushing through the gum lines of a doomed group of orphans.

I had to act fast. My kids would let me clean up a dead possum without batting an eye. But if they saw eight, adorable, defenseless babies crawling and sneezing on their dead mother, it would be a horror show. I had to kill them. It felt terrible to let them dehydrate or starve to death, or succumb slowly to one of our housecats—batted around for hours before being eaten.

Still wearing my work dress and ridiculously impractical, silver strapped wooden clogs, I grabbed a gallon bucket and filled it with water. I grabbed each tiny sneezing possum, plopped it into the bucket, and covered the top with an old piece of plywood. When it was over, I put all eight bodies, along with their mother, to rest in the municipal green bin. Thank God for Bay Area household composting. At least the work of burying the dead would be done by someone else. Allison Stockman is writer who spends all her hard-earned money on overpriced coffee and pizza in Oakland, California.

And Now It's Dead. All In The Family. Now You Know. Culture and TV. Follow awl. Choire Sicha. Michael Macher. Possums are omnivores and will take anything they can find. That means you need to get rid of possible food sources. For example, feed the pets indoors and keep the food there too. Other things you can do include:. The other thing you need to consider is the opportunistic nature of possums.

They can actually help with scavenging to prevent problems with other wildlife. The question of whether or not you can shoot a possum in your backyard rests with the laws of your municipality, county, and state. However, you can easily deter a nuisance animal by making your yard less opossum-friendly.

Finally, this method is incredibly cruel and inhumane. It would be far better to shoot the animal, if you must kill it, rather than attempt to poison it. Another option is to use a lethal trap to kill the opossum, but because of the size and nature of the opossum the type of lethal trap used will also be a danger to any other similarly-sized animals in the area. Dogs and cats are also known to be susceptible to being caught in these traps, and they can be a particularly painful way to die for whatever animal that has been caught, as they will not always grip effectively enough to kill the animal effectively.

Dealing With The Carcasses In many states there are regulations about who can kill opossums, and there will also be regulations about the safe disposal of carcasses, especially in pest animals like the opossum that are known to carry diseases. Some states will require the carcass is deposited at a specific location or facility, and others will limit the way in which it can be disposed of.

There are many people who are overly eager to kill an opossum without looking at all the drawbacks and issues related to this. Carcasses and the associated cleaning with many methods of killing are a lot of work, and there really are some good alternatives available.

One method that is very effective to solving an opossum problem is to secure your garden or yard to ensure that the opossums cannot actually get in. The majority of the opossum population will usually be migratory in nature and will rarely stay in your area for more than a day or two, but if they do return, trapping and removing the opossum is often a much better solution. More in-detail how-to possum removal articles: Information about opossum trapping - analysis and methods for how to trap.

Information about how to keep opossums away - prevention techniques. Information about how to catch a opossum - remove one stuck in the house.