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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Comment
Rebecca Shaw

My girlfriend’s a New Zealander and so hates possums. It’s not a dealbreaker (but I’ll bring her round)

Possum
‘People from Aotearoa have had no chance to see possums as animals worthy of praise, only as furry little enemies that must be destroyed.’ Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian

A few days ago, after a weekend of partying at Mardi Gras, I was in my garden at 2am in the quiet night air, trying to recover enough to be able to walk upstairs and get into bed. I was minding my own business when out of the deep silence I heard a strange scurrying and I looked up just in time to see a big fluffy tail shoot past. For a moment I thought I’d partied too hard and was hallucinating but then I decided it was probably one of the large neighbourhood cats who cruelly ignore me no matter how casually I pss pss at them.

Then I heard more notably freaky noises and noticed the suspicious shaking of some of our greenery. Turns out it was a huge possum, mistaking a tallish houseplant in the back yard of an inner Sydney terrace for a big safe tree in which to hide from a normal human woman. I went closer and spoke in what I considered to be a helpful voice, informing the possum that it had come to a dead end and it might want to come down.

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