Possum Palace

Nearly a year after buying an old timber house with a stunning garden on the outskirts of town Lotta became aware that her privacy at night was being invaded, but what she thought was a peeping tom neighbor, then a rat, was actually a possum.

"I moved here after my husband died, looking for a quiet retirement and the possibility of making a bit of money selling cut flowers from what was the most colorful and sweet smelling garden I'd ever come across -- full of perfumed blossoms," says Lotta, "and at the time I couldn't understand why the young couple I'd bought the house from were so eager to get rid of it and so cheaply, too -- but now I know!"

"It took me a long time to realize that the noises I heard at night weren't the strains of timber contracting or something else related to an old house," says Lotta. "I was just so happy to be here, pottering around in the garden, and I imagined that whatever it was I'd get used to it, but I didn't, and that's when I thought one of the neighbors might be a peeping tom lurking around my house at night."

"Well, early one morning - it must have been about 5am -- I awoke to find the biggest rat I ever saw staring at me, just inches from my bed. Talk about peeping toms, this was really something I never bargained for and something I'd never get used to!"

"I freaked out and tried to find where it had entered the house and the only place I could think of was the fireplace. I turned a small table on the side and blocked it, all the while thinking of a permanent solution to the problem."

"When I told my neighbors about the rat they laughed and said it was more likely to be a possum -- that the previous owners had a terrible problem with them -- and I was stunned to hear about this because you don't expect to find wildlife so near an urban center, especially with so many cats and dogs in the area."

"Get yourself a dog, they said, that will scare the possum off, but the last thing I wanted was a dog, yapping all day and night and messing up my precious garden, being as much a nuisance as the possum, or worse" explains Lotta. "I'm just not into animals or critters, I'm scared of most of them -- I'm a plant lady!"

"I still wasn't convinced that what I saw was a possum, not a rat, so I spent a couple of nights keeping watch -- waiting for the noises to start -- and on the third night I actually saw the critter emerge from under the house and scuttle off into the garden. It was definitely a possum, not a rat."

"What's more, I'd worked out exactly where it's nest was -- where the worst noises came from -- and it was in the ceiling between the parlour downstairs and my bedroom in the attic, where the chimney bisected the old house."

"It gained entry to the house via the chimey from under the house -- and this was going to be a huge problem because the house was sort of erected off the ground, open all around, and had a very low crawl space."

"There was no way I was going to crawl under the house to find the critter's entry hole, so I had to make my place inhospitable to wildlife. First, I cleared all the land surrounding the house so critters had no place to hide. This broke my heart because the best flower beds were right next to the house and I lost a lot of plants by transplanting them."

"That didn't work, so then I wasted time and money trying all the remedies I heard about to get rid of possums - lights, smells and noises -- and nothing worked, nothing scared it off. It was either deaf, blind and had lost its sense of smell or it was simply indestructible! It just strolled out from under the house every evening as if it owned the place and scuttled off to wherever possums scuttle off to around here -- probably to eat the leftover pet food that all of my neighbors seem to leave out on their porches."

"I thought about trapping the critter but I didn't want any close encounters with it -- I heard they are pretty ferocious when cornerned -- and, besides which, I figured that getting rid of one would only make way for another. Let's face it, the noises had been going on for such a long time -- long before I moved here apparently -- so what I was dealing with was a succession of possums, not one solitary geriatric critter."

"Word had obviously passed around the critter world that my house was Possum Palace around here -- if one died, or moved on, another one just moved in and took over terrorizing the human occupant."

"My experience totally negates everything you read about possums -- that they seldom stay in one area for more than a few nights, they don't take over an area and only mothers with babies are likely to stay around for a few weeks. Rubbish! Maybe that's how they are in the wilderness, but in built-up areas once they find a home they never leave it."

"Logically, the only way I could get rid of them permanently was to deny the critters access," sighs Lotta. "Faced with the prospect of paying a fortune to get a carpenter to box in the underside of the house, far more than the old house is worth, I finally decided to do it myself with whatever offcuts I could find."

"It took me over a month to get the job done -- with a lot of advice and amusement from the neighbors, without an offer of help -- and while this work was going on I slept very uncomfortably in the spare room which was little more than a closet,' says Lotta. "I was careful to leave a large bolt hole for the very last day -- I didn't want to trap the critter inside the house."

"That last night as I sat there in the dark waiting for the critter to leave before I went out and closed up his bolt hole forever I was a nervous wreck, full of anxiety and foreboding."

"I had terrible thoughts about the possibility the critter would dig under my new boxing -- causing me to have to dig a trench around the house and pour it with concrete -- or the other horrific possibility that it would find a new entry in the roof and drop through on top of me while I slept one night."

"The worst thought I had was that I was dealing with a female possum and that she had a family growing in the nest -- once I locked out mom, the babies would die, stink the house out and their maggots would infest the house."

"I thought about the previous owners, and wondered why they never tried boxing in the underside of the house? Perhaps they knew something I didn't," sighs Lotta, "such as that humans are no match for possums, once they target a house it's theirs forever."

"Putting these thoughts aside, I got the job done by torchlight soon after the possum had scuttled off and as I hammered in the last nail I noticed that the cladding abutting the chimney was loose."

"Argghhh, why hadn't I noticed this before?"

"It was too late at night to remedy this new problem so I piled up some timber against the loose cladding hoping it would keep the critter out until I could fix it properly, and went to bed exhausted."

"Just before 5am I was awakened by a real racket -- bangs and scratching -- and I was petrified," says Lotta. "Obviously the critter was angry about having access denied and was doing its darndest to get back in, maybe calling on the whole possum community to descend on my house and tear it to pieces!"

"And then all went quiet. I had to wait until the following evening to find out whether it had gone off to find a new home or had succeeded in getting back into the house (and if so what and where the new point of entry was) and it was nail-biting time again," laughs Lotta. "I sat in the parlour with the TV on mute, listening for the familiar scuffling that happens about an hour before the critter usually leaves -- and there were no sounds at all -- not a peep!"

"I couldn't believe that I had actually succeeded in getting rid of the critter -- I should have felt jubiliant but instead I felt drained because of all the work, and the length of time it had taken to get rid of it."

"I also realized that the work hadn't stopped -- I then had to secure the loose cladding, get up on the roof to block the chimney and check for other entry points, paint the boxing to match the house and thoroughly disinfect the house and surrounds to remove all of the critter's scent so that he doesn't try to find a way back into the house."

"I'm not exactly going to be sitting on my laurels, smelling the roses for the rest of my time here -- as much as I would like to, and deserve," sighs Lotta. "He's still out there -- and his relatives -- just waiting for a chance to get back to Possum Palace -- and I need to remain eternally vigilant from now on. Sort of go out on possum patrol every night or something."

"Think about it this way -- I may legally own the house and land but in the natural world it's possum territory and I'm the uninvited guest -- or pest -- according to them!"

"It's not exactly the retirement I expected," sighs Lotta, "and even the blossoms seem less colorful and sweet smelling after this experience."

"Hopefully, these bad feelings will go away in time and I'll be happy here again," says Lotta, "but if I'm still feeling uneasy in about six months time I will definitely sell up and move on -- life's too short to spend it living in competition with wildlife, and besides which my new neighbors are a pretty poor lot in relation to offering a helping hand."