Virginia Returns

Haven’t seen Virginia since the end of March a year ago when late one night she peered through the lower panes of the family room French door. I was surprised to see her done up in white rag curls all along her back. Took me a few seconds to realize that opossums don’t do rag curls and that those tidy little white projections along her back were her brood hanging on during her nocturnal meanderings.

Thanks to her lack of speed I was able to snap a few photos of her as she made her escape. A later photo analysis of the “rag curls” suggested at least 10 little Didelphis virginianans accompanied their mother that evening. Virginia appeared once or twice more in the next week and then no more. About a month later two rather adorable smaller versions claimed our woodpile as home.

Here is one we spied in early May. We were happy to have them as we saw the evidence of their food gathering in our flowerbeds taking care of all sorts of small insects and cleaning up the fallen fruit from the loquat trees.

Now I don’t know if this mother with swollen marsupium traversing our deck and yard this spring is Virginia or one of her babes, but I wonder how soon she will be sporting those rag curls.

Click here for more information about the stylish opossums.