Possum Poop Traditional Cache
Nomex: As there's been no cache to find for months, I'm archiving it to keep it from continually showing up in search lists, and to prevent it from blocking other cache placements. If you wish to repair/replace the cache sometime in the future, just contact us (by email), and assuming it meets the guidelines, we'll be happy to unarchive it.
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Just looked like an area that needed a cache. This old house looks like it would be a good place to find possums. No need to go in or up close to the house.
Didelphimorphia (pronounced da/delf/i/mor/fi/a) is the order of common opossums of the Western Hemisphere. They are commonly also called possums. Their unspecialized biology, flexible diet and reproductive strategy make them successful colonizers and survivors in unsettled times. Originally native to the eastern United States, the Virginia Possum was intentionally introduced into the West during the Great Depression, probably as a source of food.
Possums are small to medium-sized marsupials, with the largest about the size of a large house cat, and the smallest the size of a mouse. They tend to be semi-arboreal omnivores, although there are many exceptions.
Possums have more teeth than any other land mammal; only aquatic mammals have more. Possums stand flat on the ground and the hind feet have an opposable digit with no claw. Like monkeys, possums have prehensile tails. Adult possums do not hang from trees by their tails.
Possums have a remarkably robust immune system, and show partial or total immunity to the venom of rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, and other pit vipers. Possums are about eight times less likely to carry rabies than wild dogs.
The opossum lifespan is unusually short for a mammal of its size, usually only two to four years.
Possums are opportunistic omnivores with a very broad diet. Their diet mainly consists of carrion and many individual opossums are killed on the highway when scavenging for roadkill. They are also known to eat insects, frogs, birds, snakes, small mammals, and earthworms.
When threatened or harmed, they will "play possum", mimicking the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal. The lips are drawn back, teeth are bared, saliva foams around the mouth, and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from the anal glands. The physiological response is involuntary, rather than a conscious act. Their stiff, curled form can be prodded, turned over, and even carried away. The animal will regain consciousness after a period of minutes or hours and escape.
The Virginia Posum is the only North American marsupial.
An early description of the Possum comes from explorer John Smith, who wrote "An Opassom hath an head like a Swine, and a taile like a Rat, and is of the bignes of a Cat. Under her belly she hath a bagge, wherein she lodgeth, carrieth, and sucketh her young.".
The Possum was once a favorite game animal in the United States, and in particular the southern regions which have a large body of recipes and folklore relating to the Possum. It is said that the meat causes gas.
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