While visiting Andy Brekhus on his dairy farm, we went out to check traps and found a dead possum in one. Andy pulled the trap open, took the possum out, and reset the trap. He carried the possum by its hind legs, as blood dripped from its mouth. He dropped it just outside the barn door, and we went in to get something. Not one minute later, we went out and the "dead" possum was gone. It had been playing possum all the while.
Around that time, I had a newspaper route seven miles from my home, so very early every morning all summer, I rode my bicycle to the route, did the route, then rode back, eighteen miles in all. Along the way, a mother possum had been hit and killed by a car, and her hairless babies were scattered all across the road. They were there for several days, and the stench was terrible.
A couple decades later, Micki and I found a living, young possum on the shoulder of the highway. It was too young to fear people, especially being orphaned, and we took it home. I realized it would be difficult for us to care for it, so we took to into the woods and let it go, sadly knowing that, with all the predators, it wouldn't live long.
Here in Missouri we raised chickens for a while. Now and then a predator would kill one, so we were on watch. One night the chickens acted up, and the kids ran in yelling that a possum was up in a tree by the coop. I got my 9mm pistol and went out and shot at it. The poor thing just sat there on the limb. I shot all nine bullets, and the critter still sat there. While I was inside reloading, the kids told me that it had fallen to the ground, and I went out to see the bloody body lying dead beside the fence.
Our chickens were eventually killed one by one by predators, and we stopped keeping them. My main reason for retiring from chicken farming was that I never want to kill another possum.
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