Possums have been a regular part of our lives. Many years ago, when we first moved into this house, possums had already made themselves home in the garage and in the ceiling cavity. There wasn’t a door in the opening that goes under the floor and possums had managed to go through the opening and up into the ceiling cavity through a gap between the house and external brickwork. This became apparent one day when we were in the kitchen and notices that the light was glowing dimly, even though it was switched off. Closer inspection showed water dripping through the light fitting. The house had a gravity feed water tank. This was installed in the ceiling. The tank has a small header tank on the side. When I had a look, one end of the cover of the header tank had fallen into the header tank leaving it sitting at a 45 degree angle. Water was now hitting the cover and spraying over the kitchen ceiling. A possum was sitting on the hot water tank, presumably enjoying the warmth of the tank.
We had a cat door and it wasn’t long before a possum learnt to use it. We discovered this when we found one wandering down the hall one night just after sundown. One freezing winters night we were woken to hear one in the house. While trying to shoo it out it started climbing up one of the door frames.
We have a wood heater. It has a 15cm diameter flue that goes for about 5 meters up through an old brick chimney. We were surprised to discover a possum had managed to climb onto our roof, up the outside of the chimney, squeeze under the cowling and then down through the pipe into the heater.
Yep, they climbed up here and down this chimney.
Even though we got it out, we have had this happen quite a few times and it wasn’t always with the same possum. I don’t think this is somewhere they went and got stuck, we found they were able to get themselves back out and apparently liked the chimney as a bed, often coming night after night until I blocked the chimney.
They have played havoc in our vegetable garden and have eaten broccoli down to the ground. We found we could deter them be erecting a wobbly fence. Fortunately they haven’t touched the garden for years.
You may think I don’t like possums, but I do. They are quite cute and while the sounds they make can be terrifying if you don’t know what they are, I find the sounds quite fascinating.
To allow us to live in harmony I have spent time blocking access to buildings. I have also made several houses for them.
The entrance is a bit of a tight squeeze, but not much of a challenge for a possum.
Another enjoying its house.
These generally have been quite successful, although two different houses have been taken over by bees, clearly, they didn’t realise they were built for possums.
The current houses were in poor condition and not being used so I decided to build another couple. This time I decided to roughly follow plans by NSW Environment and Heritage – Guide to making a possum house. This time I used some old floorboards and a sheet formply. I looked at different types of ply and the reviews of all of them were not that good. I used formply on our mailbox and as long as the edges are well sealed it seems to last fairly well. It may be a mistake to use it for a possum house, I guess time will tell.
Two things I didn’t consider. Firstly, how heavy they were going to be with the materials I used and secondly, I don’t cope well with heights. A couple of meters up a ladder is ok, but anything more and I start to shake. I tried to mount them as high as I could with the ladder I have, but it was quite a challenge and in the end I had to use rope over a high branch to winch the boxes up.
This is one. It’s not up particularly high, but it was challenging enough to get it there.
Here is the other one.
The build plans state “Few good homes won’t remain empty for long if there are possums in the area”, and because I had seen at least four different ones in the area, I was feeling optimistic a possum would move in soon. For a long time the only thing that showed any interest was this kookaburra.
This week it was time for celebration as it is the first time I have found one being used by a possum and that comes 9 months after installing them. We have just had a week that has been mostly cool, a bit miserable and regular rain, which may have been an incentive to move in. Here is the new resident enjoying its home.
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