DID YOU KNOW THAT OPOSSUMS EAT VIRTUALLY ALL THE TICKS IN YOUR YARD?

WideOpenSpaces ^ | February 3, 2020 | Craig Raleigh

[CheshireTheCat]

...The opposum's ability to munch down on the annoying blood suckers took even researchers by surprise.

"I had no suspicion they'd be such efficient tick-killing animals," said Richard Ostfeld, of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. "Don't hit opossums if they've playing dead in the road."

Opossums are crazy, fastidious, grooming animals like cats, and when they find a tick, it's right down the hatch. Researchers found many digested ticks in the feces of cooperative opossums. Cheers to the guy who got that job!

Ostfeld said that one opossum can kill and eat some 5,000 ticks in a single season...

[gundog]

Yeah...give ‘em room and they’ll take off. They’re kind of trail oriented. If something bothered mine in the middle of a room, it would tentatively move to one of it’s trails along a wall and then go like hell.

[Williams]

You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen a growling pack of German Shepherd puppies instantly devouring the remains of their sibling, who the mother had decapitated with one swift bite.

Always separate the mother from the puppies as they get bigger.

[NewCenturions]

Bookmarking

[cyclotic]

They also have their own lodge in Canada

[Disambiguator]

The possums must have been Beatles fans.

[Arlis]

Get ticks on me all the time. Live in the woods of Virginia. No big deal.

But in 2000, one tick got me - and gave me Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever & almost killed me. RMSF can kill you in 3 days if you are 3 or under or over 50 - I was 55. And it was over a week before they diagnosed me incorrectly but put me on a tetracycline IV that saved my life when I was near death.

Love opossums.

[Hot Tabasco]

I have grub dig holes in my yard I assume are from a possum.

I do too but I think mine are from skunks. With that being said, my trail cam has caught both skunks and opossums in the yard..........

Had a skunk under my back deck this spring but I finally got rid of the critter then blocked up the last hole he was using to get under it.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

In the last 2 years I have been put milky spore in my yard and garden. I had a massive amount of them before I started. I had fewer, and fewer still last year, have not had any this year. (Yet...)

We had a killing frost in the spring that killed the lilacs and plum flowers. Perhaps the Milky spore and cold killed the J.B. grubs?

https://www.orkin.com/other/beetles/japanese-beetles/what-eats-japanese-beetles

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons

I found some Assassin bugs 2 days ago. I am afraid I killed a small batch of them a month ago thinking they were squash bugs, a mistake I will not make again!.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=assassin+bug+nymph

Assassin bugs, wheel bugs. Look at them, remember them, welcome them! They are your friends!

(Full grown assassin bug taking down a beetle!

[mumblypeg]

No.
There must be something tasty over there. Maybe ticks!
I tried sneaking behind it to see where it goes, but it breaks into a run & disappears into overgrowth.
But being followed by a huge snake didn’t scare the possum at all.

[gnarledmaw]

That’s exactly the problem I had when I moved out to this farm. Skunks everywhere and little grub mines all over the place.

[RummyChick]

sheesh...nature is brutal

[Williams]

I certainly looked at my German shepherd differently for a while after that. Otherwise a perfectly sweet dog.

[dznutz]

How to find a possum by Ernest T. Bass

[RummyChick]

was there something wrong with the one

dont know anything about dogs having babies as mine got fixed

seems like that is so harsh

i tried to google it but then saw that story about a shephard eating a human baby and had to stop

sometimes the internet is just too much

[Ozark Tom]

Wild boar? What would make a D stand out as a choice upon the menu?

[Williams]

If you don’t separate them at some point they annoy the mother and she will kill them. It happened in an instant.

[Sequoyah101]

And all this time I thought the survived exclusively on cat food.

I don’t see them as fastidious and cat like. They are vile needle toothed bare tailed creatures who only die on the highway.

[Sequoyah101]

Guinea Hens eat ticks as fast as they can find them.

[gundog]

They don’t really have feet made for digging.

[Sequoyah101]

Absolutely nothing short of a maggot will eat a democrat. Even the Great White spits them out in disgust.