Update 21st Nov 2019

Miel has long ago stopped back-riding and no longer shares a nestbox with Sasha.

Miel - 19^th Oct 2019 [photo by Xesce]

Currently, there is an uneasy truce in the garage: Sasha sleeps in either the garage door or one of the possum apartments above it, whereas Miel sleeps at the other end of the garage either in a stack of car tyres or on top of box 7. Eventually, Miel will no longer be welcome in the garage and will later be chased out of the area altogether, but he will hopefully remain here until at least February.

All three brushtails have been visiting regularly soon after dusk. While I would have to check back on records to be sure, from memory this normally only happens during winter when there is less food around. So possibly they are having a hard time due to the drought. There is less greenery around at the moment than in previous years, and the tree that seems to be doing the best is a camphor laurel, which is edible to possums but unlikely to be enjoyable.

Usually the brushtails tolerate each other when they all have food, but when it's gone there can be squabbles. Here is a Sasha with a tuft of fur in her mouth after having taken a bite out of Bilbo.

Sasha - 6^th Nov 2019

Sasha has another baby in her pouch. This is her tenth known baby. It is probably still unfurred at this stage but it is possible that if she were to go into a possum box, we might see it start to emerge briefly from her pouch on hot days.

Bilbo - 16^th Nov 2019

Bilbo picked up a deep wound behind his right shoulder around the start of the month. His wounds always seem to attract ticks and this particular wound had two ticks on it in succession. While I admit this is unlikely, it almost seems like he might deliberately invite ticks onto his wounds in order to drain any infection because this wound was very deep (at least 1 cm) yet it healed without any fuss.

Koru stopped visiting some time ago and now there are no ringtails visiting.

Koru is the last (known) possum of the ringtail family which started visiting 10 years ago. The line of succession was Gumdrop - Wasabi - Koji - Nikita - Koru. Gumdrop was Koru's great-great grandmother. I intend to write more about these possums, and in particular Wasabi who has a long and interesting history. 

Pebbles and her baby - a boy who has been named Geo - have been seen around the place. Bamm-Bamm appears to have been replaced by another male who has been named Omar. None of these ringtails currently visit. Possibly this might change in the future.