I have seen a lot of opossums over the years …
Usually they move slow…, and look kind of dumb…
However
Last week one crossed my yard… In the middle of the day.
Moving as fast as a cat in a hurry…
Jumped in the air a few times …as a cat would on the run…
It stopped long enough for me to be sure it was in fact a opossum.
Never have seen one move like that before
Gave me a new respect of what they are capable of.
I guess it was just feeling good, kicking up its heels, …spring and all …
And quail eggs, Dove eggs and Turkey eggs and will destroy nests for animals on the ground
They can be fast when they want to. If you happen to spook one they will rear onto their hind legs and hiss at you and run toward you knashing their teeth as well. They also feed on carrion and carry disease…and he wasn’t particularly happy was why he moved so fast. They are quick. They can get up a tree in a flash!
One redeeming factor of opossum is they kill rats in their territory. @dutch-s is correct about their speed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they can chase down rats.
They call that the possum trot, its kind of how I run nowadays, lol
I’m pretty sure they can . I have rats out here but not many. It has to be something preying on them. I do have a few really big Hawks though. And they have NO fear…
They used to strip the bark from my saplings in Maine. 
male Anna and Allen’s hummingbird. Photos by Janet!
they haven’t made it to n.Maine yet.
I had a beautiful spider on my current bush,one year…she was white, with a bright pink flowery design on the back.
Very effecient at keeping the bugs cleared
After 2 years of planting milkweed, we’ve finally got a butterfly sanctuary going. Did a quick sweep of the yard…found this guy…he was hangoing out under the leaf of my recently planted pink lady that I grew from seed…
a little more than an hour later…
we’ve got monarch chrysalis all over the place. expect we’ll have a bumper crop in the next few day…pretty cool.
Awesome. I have 500 seeds stratifying right now. I’ll be putting them out next week they’ve been in the fridge 6 weeks. If you don’t mind? Anything special I can do to make things work?
wow 500…with that many seeds I’m sure you’lI get a bunch of seedlings. I started out with a measley 12 seeds, had them in the refrigerator for about 6 weeks and then planted in pots just before summer, they had started sprouting. That was almost 2 years ago. Used regular old potting soil. Of the 12, 2 survived and I finally planted both late last year in the yard. If you ask me I probably got lucky that these made it…one thing I did make sure to do was keep them out of the direct sun…
I have heard they have a low rate for success. I have plenty of room so I’m doing a whole nice section under some trees where the light will be diffused and not all day. I have some they call swamp milkweed I’m putting in a wet area I have. I really look forward to seeing Monarch’s. I have a ton of butterflies and this will be the best of them … hopefully!
Milkweeds are one of the most common weeds in my veggie garden. I feel guilty pulling them, but have only once ever found a monarch caterpillar on one, and that was one not in the garden, so I left it There is still a large area with lots of milkweeds in it, too. I would think there would be a lot of monarchs there.
Looks like Tiffany glass.
the survival rate for a monarch is less than 10% of the eggs that hatch and make it to adult hood. Between the lizards, birds they can’t catch a break, so I’m really suprised at how many we have…I wonder also if part of it is the climate…other than summer, we’ve got a pretty nice year round weather.
Bees and other pollinators love milkweed, too
I pull out the common milkweed, it spreads too invasively by rhizomes, but a lot of other varieties are well behaved in a garden
Around here it is the “tropical” orange milkweed that is a prolific producer of seeds and offspring. The Monarch’s like it but seem to prefer the softer leaves of the yellow.
