Faux Snake

There are many wild animals living in my barn and I’ve learned to recognize the sounds made by most of them. Occasionally, one will fool me. When I heard a slow, steady movement through a straw pile, along with the soft scrape of scales against chicken wire, I was sure it was the sound of a hunting black snake. What I discovered was the strangest snake I’ve ever encountered.

Tracking down to the other end, I found a decidedly unsnake-like head.

My activity had awakened a sleeping opossum and he was trying his best to do a slow slink away from me.

Once discovered, opossums generally sit quietly and stare at you. They are masters of the slow sneak and will make their retreat in super slow motion. When they believe they’ve left the threat behind, they’ll shift into running opossum mode.

Like just about every other wild mammal at Blue Jay Barrens, the opossum carries a load of ticks. May seems to be a peak time for ticks and the mid sized mammals always carry a heavy load of the parasites. I sometimes wonder how such a small animal can stand to lose so much blood.

NOTE: Sorry about the late posting yesterday. Blogger was having difficulties and was not accessible for about 20 hours. The problem also resulted in the loss of many comments posted during the last two days.