O Possum! My Possum!

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s high time to shine a light on an under-appreciated nocturnal visitor to America’s backyards and garbage cans: the opossum. The opossum is the only marsupial in North America, and they’ve been snuffling around since before the dinosaurs died. It faints at the slightest threat, yet can be struck by a venomous snake and, unfazed, turn right around and eat it. Also, they have two vaginas, and an extra pseudo-vagina. What more do you need? The opossum’s superpower is its reproductive system, and the thing that’s really going to make you say “holy scat!” is what’s going on in that pouch. So…what’s it going to take to get some respect for the opossum? Featuring: Jessica Anderson, Joseph Bruchac, Danielle Draback, and Frannie Greenberg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So one afternoon, last summer, producer Jessica Hunt toured a backyard unlike any other.
0:11.6	No one is in here.
0:12.6	We're preparing this for our bobcat.
0:14.6	We've got our first bobcat.
0:16.8	This is another porcupine.
0:18.6	This is an ambassador that stays with us forever.
0:21.3	We have 18 skunks right now throughout these enclosures.
0:27.4	This place is the Milestone Wildlife Center in Wyndham, New Hampshire.
0:31.5	One of the tucked away places where sick or injured animals go after being found and reported
0:35.8	by good Samaritans.
0:37.3	Frannie Greenberg is the executive director and when she gave me a tour, she had her phone
0:42.0	like a necklace around her neck toward the entire time.
0:45.9	We get phone calls regularly, often, all day, all night.
0:54.0	But I was there to get to know one particular creature, kind of mysterious.
0:58.7	Oh my goodness, you would scare me.
1:01.5	I would back off from you.
1:03.8	And opossum.
1:04.8	It sounds like a grumbly old man.
1:10.2	He totally startled me.
1:11.5	It came out of from nowhere else and he was like, ha, ha, ha, ha.
1:17.2	You know, they lack the appeal, the natural appeal of the foxes or the raccoons that
1:23.1	we walked by.
	...

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