'POSSUM HOLD-UP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 81, 5 April 1941, Page 11

'POSSUM HOLD-UP.

APPEAL TO POLICE. A DEFIANT FAMILY. i LOS AXGKLES. Mar. 2.",. The City Hall switchboard buzzed yesterday afternoon for the umpteenth time. ! "This i« Mrs. Mary Hoehn.- said the excited party. "I am Wing bothered by a 'possum." "I will connect you with tho Hodent Control Hmeau." said the opera tor efficiently. Tho spokesman in the Kodont Control Bureau volunteered the inforin.ition that tho "possum i> not a rodent, l.iit a mar- : supial. But perhaps Mrs. Hoehn wmild like to have a |H>liceman come .-hoot it. Before she could protot. the call was transferred again. The sceptical de*k sergeant declared that, shooting opossums was a bit extraordinary, but lie would connect her with the animal shelter. ; The animal shelter gentleman didn't' believe there was any shelter available for marsupials, but lie had a friend at > a parade on South Broadway who had i two fine hunting hounds to whom the j very word 'possum is exhilarating.

Straining at their leashes, the hounds '< wcro brought by their ma«tcr. Ross Caeey. to Mrs. Hochn's flower sho|i at 2SOO. Fletcher Drive, where the animal has been despoiling her l>e™onias for more than a year. They barked ferociously and sniffed under the "recti- 1 house while Mrs. Hoehn found the ' animal in an adjacent garage. j Casey vailed off his dogs and lifted ' the opossum from her nest amid tracks j of moss. There was not one but 10 I opossume, a litter of nine clinpin? to ' the mother's long gray fur with tiny, i knife-sharp teeth. Baring her fangs to all who ap | proaehed. Mother 'Possum and her family ■waited in a reinforewl parrot cage to l»V taken by Casey to the mountains, where

they will l»c freed