Rahmet's new baby, who has been named Pax, is now back-riding.
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| Pax riding on Rahmet's back - 18th Sept 2020 |
By the way, I forgot to mention this earlier but Rahmet has picked up a tear in her left ear - visible in photo above. This hasn't given her any problems and it least makes it easier to recognise her on the box cameras.
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| Pax riding on Rahmet's back - 18th Sept 2020 |
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| Pax with halo - 18th Sept 2020 [Photo by Xesce] |
Currently, Pax is back-riding for part of the night only. As time goes on, he will spend more time on the back and less in the pouch and will be up to less mischief in the box during the day.
Sasha and Wink are doing well. Wink has been bold enough to visit the house on his own on a couple of occasions.
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| Wink back-riding on Sasha - 2nd Sept 2020 |
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| Sasha (left) and Wink (right) - 16th Sept 2020 |
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| Wink - 18th Sept 2020 |
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| Wink - 19th Sept 2020 |
It seems that Sasha is making no effort to chase Rahmet out of the area. As long as Rahmet keeps out of her way (which she generally does) when food is being offered, Sasha seems content to let Rahmet be.
Nikita is still visiting most days. She is in very good health with no pluckings and no patches of thinning fur which ringtails frequently get. She has more babies in her pouch, but they are still very small.
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| Nikita - 22nd Sept 2020 |
Omar was also seen once earlier in the month. He is still keeping away from humans.
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| Omar - 4th Sept 2020 |
The refurbished Box 1 has been slept in by a possum. I had assumed that Rahmet or Marcel would be the first to use it, but it turned out that an unknown marauding male brushtail took that honour. The other possums were all well aware of the intruder, and all of them visited the box soon after he'd left for the night. Sasha left a turd in the box as a message to him.
On that day, we also (probably) had a record number of possums in the boxes. In addition to the marauding possum in Box 1, Rahmet and Pax were in Box 3, Marcel was in Box 4 and Sasha and Wink were in Box 7, totalling six brushtails.
I say "probably" because about 10 years ago, Gumdrop was using Box 2. Gumdrop was a ringtail and on one occasion had three babies with her. Leena and Kiki were also around during this time period and could have had babies with them as well, so there was the theoretical possibility there could have been six or even seven possums in boxes simultaneously, although I haven't found footage showing more than four possums at any one time.
Recently, Marcel has picked up some injuries - possibly he was fighting off the marauding male possum who now hasn't been seen for a week - and these injuries have attracted some particularly enormous ticks. Despite this, he seems to be in good spirits.
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| Marcel with giant tick on his neck - 18th Sept 2020 |
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| Marcel, the tick magnet - 24th Sept 2020 |
A few days ago a brush turkey chick was seen in the front garden. It hasn't been seen since, and I'm hoping this is because they are well camouflaged and don't draw attention to themselves.
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| Brush Turkey Chick - 21st Sept 2020 |
So Sasha still doesn't like the fact that another possum used box 1 as so left lots of droppings yesterday and Wink went into the box 1 too. So what does this do regarding the likelihood of another possum using box 1 again?
ReplyDeleteI don't know the precise meaning of a possum leaving poo in a box used by another possum, but it doesn't appear to act as a particular deterrent against using the box. In November 2018, Sasha left a pile of turds in Box 3 after Bilbo used it. The very next day, Bilbo swept the turds aside with his tail and slept in the box again.
DeleteI could possibly clean the poo out of the box and I will probably do so if the box remains unoccupied for a while, but I don't want to be too quick to interfere with messages that the possums may be exchanging.
Did Marcel pick up any more ticks?
ReplyDeleteMarcel doesn't seem to have picked up any more ticks that I can see. Certainly nothing like the giant ticks he had in this post.
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