Posted on 09/19/2010 8:54:50 AM PDT by Daffynition
The city played possum -- and Brooklyn residents lost.
In a bizarre attempt to outwit Mother Nature, city officials introduced beady-eyed opossums in Brooklyn years ago to scarf down rats running amok in the borough, according to local officials.
Surprise: Operation opossum didn't work.
Not only do wily rats continue to thrive, but the opossums have become their own epidemic, with bands of the conniving creatures sauntering through yards, plundering garbage cans and noshing on fruit trees.
They've even taken up golf, with two sightings of the whiskered marsupials at the Dyker Heights municipal course in the past week, local officials said.
"They are everywhere," said Theresa Scavo, chairwoman for Community Board 15, which represents Sheepshead Bay and surrounding south Brooklyn neighborhoods.
"Didn't any of those brain surgeons realize that the opossums were going to multiply?"
A city Sanitation spokeswoman said they were not involved with the Brooklyn opossum drop, and the Health Department didn't have any record of it. But Scavo and two city councilmen said city officials spoke about the effort at a 2007 Brooklyn forum.
"City brought possums in to take care of rats," read Community Board 15 notes from the meeting.
The opossums were set free in local parks and underneath the Coney Island boardwalk, with the theory being they would die off once the rats were gobbled up, said Councilman Domenic Recchia (D-Brooklyn).
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
One day there will be a horror movie made about this.
‘Posums don’t hunt and aren’t predators. They scarf down everything from road kill to garbage to occasional nestlings, but hunt?
“Everyone knows the main diet of urban opossums is cat and dog food.”
LOL! When trying humane traps with cat kibble to get my housecat back, we wound up with possums every night.
Finally had to put dishes of oatmeal and molasses further out on the property to keep them away from the kibble.
opossum ping
They’ve taken up golf? But how do they keep score? In their heads?
Dang that is a fanged one!!!
Marsupials hardly ever have rabies.
Possums are very nice animals. I far prefer them to raccoons. Unfortunately, we have raccoons. And raccoons are very bad to have rabies.
Back in the ‘80s I was sent to the Marine’s PX in Kaneohe, Hawaii air station to work on their computer. The big local joke was that in the early days somebody got to idea to bring mongooses over to take care of the rat problem in the sugar cane fields.
After freeing a whole bunch, it was found that the mongooses slept all night while the rats ran wild, then hunted all day while the rats slept.
Like New York City, they now have a problem with both.
Proto-rats? Original Rat Bastages?
"It seemed like a good idea at the time" - a common refrain heard among democrat pols.
Think they should have let the possums go after sterilizing them.
A possum isn’t very bright but he is wired for survival. They don’t starve to death easily.
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