OPOSSUMS AND BIRDS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 31, 7 February 1927, Page 8

OPOSSUMS AND BIRDS

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Haying noticed a letter in "The Post" of 'Saturday's date regarding the above, I feel that I cannot refrain from writing this in protest to the way the poor little opossum is being maligned. I am'an Australian, and know the habits of the little animal thoroughly. ,It is not a flesh-eating animal, and will r not kill birds or fowls, nor will it eat or rob birds' nests. As a • matter of fact, birds ,o£.the parrot tribe make their'nests in hollow spouts in trees, and the opossum and they live together in the same trees; if they preyed on birds as "H.M.8." and other correspondents in our newspapers affirm, how is it that the Australian bush is teeming with bird life, also opossums? The opossum lives principally on young leaves of the. gum (or eucalyptus) trees, grass, and various shrubs and herbage; but it does not destroy-trees, nor orchards, In the New England district of New South Wales, where it was possible to shoot a hundred or more in an evening, there were good orchards, and never a complaint about the opossum; I can say emphatically that it is a most harmless little animal, and people who say it is such a desperado know nothirJg abput it.—l am, etc.; AUSTRALIAN.

4th. February.