A PET OPOSSUM

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22317, 3 February 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

A PET OPOSSUM

Alice Crampton, Rangiora, writes about pets—cats, dogs, rabbits, and birds. “Of them all,” she says, “I think ■that the opossum is the dearest and quaintest. This furry little fellow with his black, beady eyes is so amusing. Joe had an opossum which he called Timmy. It was given to him during the trapping season by a trapper who found it in the mother’s pouch. Timmy was about the size pf a rat then and he had sharp claws and quite a

powerful tail. Joe kept him warmly wrapped up in a piece of old blanket, and fed him with a teaspoon with cow’s milk and water, sweetened with sugar. When his fur grew Joe made him a hutch outside with a bed of hay. Then he used to feed him with the leaves of some native plants, and sometimes —for he was not a Plunket baby-* with sweets, cakes, and bread spread thickly with butter and ja®. I loved to watch Timmy eating. H® used to sit on his hind feet and hold the bread in his forepaws, takm c small, polite mouthfuls, but eating with evident enjoyment.” Attar of Roses Attar (or Otto) of Roses is an essential oil of roses prepared principally in Bulgaria, It takes 2001 b of roses to produce loz 01 attar, and during the last European war the wholesale P rica reached nearly £5 an ounce.