SILENT OPOSSUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 302, 21 December 1932, Page 11

SILENT OPOSSUM.

ORCHARD DEPRfeDATIONS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) WAIMAUKU, Tuesday. Residents of the Huapai and Waimauku districts report that the opossum is becoming one of the major pests of the fruitgrowers. Nectarines and peaches are favourites, and one orchardist had 15 apple trees stripped of their fruit buds. Another resident complained that he lost the whole of his prize rose blooms, not even a solitary bud escaping, and when the roses were disposed of the opossums stripped the fruit off young trees and even ate bark. Various stories are recounted by householders, several of whom have been awakened by what was apparently an earthquake, but investigation' proved to be an opossum tumbling down a chimney. Arriving home 'late from a dance, a man found the front door knob occupied by the tail of an opossum, which was suspended from .it. In the same house later an opossum was discovered hanging on a door knob in a passage. ,

A resident who leaves h'is doors wide opei at night statee that the animals come in the bedroom through the windows and move about the house as they please. Several fruitgrowers have made successful traps of boxes with a trapdoor which have been baited with fruit, and quite a number of opossums have been caught in this way, m ',