Update 5th Mar 2013 - Kiki's New Baby

Kiki's new baby has finally shown himself. We've named him Spock. Here are some photos:

Kiki with Spock backriding 5^th Mar 2013

Update 26th Feb 2013 - Possum Hospital

Kiki, Pinot and Marlon are still visiting and Wesley has returned with a bite wound on his neck. It looks like another case of exudative dermatitis. [The wound is actually significantly worse than it looks in this photo; I chose the photo because it's a better one of Wesley.]

Wesley after a bit of a fight 22^nd Feb 2013

Wesley was last seen in November last year and we thought he'd returned to where he came from, but it seems he's come back for medical treatment.

Update 13th Feb 2013 - An Eye For An Eye

Still just Kiki, Pinot and Marlon visiting the house, but there have been a couple of young ringtails seen around and also a surprise visitor to box 3 (see later).

Over the past few days there has been a bit of a dispute between Marlon and Pinot. They have been chasing each other over the roof and in the early hours of this morning were heard trading insults and threats in the garage. Today Pinot arrived looking like this:

Pinot after a bit of a fight, 13^th Feb 2013

His eye wound is almost identical to the one inflicted on Marlon in January, so it looks there has been some payback happening.

Update 26th Jan 2013

Kiki, Pinot and Marlon are still around with no other possums having been sighted in a while.

Marlon 24/1/2013

Marlon's eye wound has got better without treatment. For the first couple of days, the wound had a nasty scab on it, indistinguishable (at least to me) from exudative dermatitis, but after that it rapidly got better and was virtually gone by the one week mark.

Update 19th December 2012

[Sorry that this post if out of order. I accidentally clicked the wrong place and deleted the original and there doesn't seem to be any way to get it back without re-posting it.]

There haven't been any updates for a while because I've been away for work.

Since my last post, only Kiki, Svejk and Pinot have been visiting with any regularity and now even Svejk hasn't been seen for several days. Here are some recent photos of the three:

Kiki 11/12/2012  [Photo by Xesce]

Update 16th Jan 2013

For a while now, only Kiki, Pinot and Marlon have been visiting.

Kiki 5/1/2013

Update 23rd November 2012

Kiki, Svejk, Wesley, Pinot and Marlon have all been visiting (in roughly that order of frequency).

A new male ringtail has been seen around. He looks like Wasabi - who is quite possibly his father - but is smaller (smaller than he looks in the photo) and has some nicks out of his ears. He might be one of the babies seen in September of this year. We have called him Tabasco. Hopefully, like Wasabi, he will prove to be distasteful to pythons.

Tabasco 7/11/2012

Wasabi himself hasn't visited for a while, however there have been ringtails seen in the trees, and it's possible he's about, but just not visiting.

Toe-biting Possums

Many brushtail possums have a toe-biting habit. When I was on holidays in Tasmania a few years ago, one of the local possums (named Rufus) greeted me in the following way:

Rufus toe-biting - Cradle Mountain, Tasmania 8/9/2008

I haven't worked out what the motivation for this is.

The majority will advance menacingly towards a person's foot, lightly nip at the big toe then run away. Some, however, will merely sniff at a toe. Very few will bite hard. Some possums never toe-bite at all. Ginger, our first possum, was like this. She would occasionally climb a person's leg, but never toe-bite.

Update 30th Oct 2012

We haven't had a photo of Pinot in a while, so here's one of him in a characteristic pose on the balcony rail.

Pinot 24/10/2012

Some of the possums are now visiting much less often than before. For a while, only Kiki, Svejk and Wesley were visiting and we thought that the others may have left the area, however all of the remaining possums (Marlon, Pinot, Flea and Wasabi) have since shown themselves. No pythons have been seen in over a month.

Update 11th Oct 2012 - Possums, Turkeys and Koalas

We haven't had a picture of Marlon for a while, so here's a recent one of him pulling a face at the camera.

Marlon: "Get lost! I don't want my photo taken!"  5/10/2012