While house makeover shows are a dime a dozen, this one at Glossodia deserves a mention.
Cameraman Doug Wiggins had a possum box high in a tree in his backyard, one of three, but it was getting very shabby.
After bashing together a new one, on Sunday night it was time for what he called ‘Operation Possum House Stealth Swap’. When it got dark and the brushtail possums had gone out foraging, Mr Wiggins swung into action.
“With the help of ladders and studio lights, the operation was carried out with the necessary military precision to fool our little furry friends,” he said. “We even lined the new box with nesting material from the old one. There are three possums living in this one.”
He’s never certain they’ll take to a new box, and couldn’t verify if they had until the next night as they sleep during the day. He waited until it got dark on April 24 and kept his eye on the box. Sure enough, out they came, blinking at his paparazzi flashes.
He said they’ve had possum boxes in the trees on their half-acre property for 20 years. “We usually get five or six years out of them, out in the weather,” he said. They used to have eight or 10 boxes but the population was just growing too much.
He said all the possums living on their property now are descendants of the female who “melted my wife’s heart” when they moved in in 1995.
“She was unsure whether we had made the right decision moving out here, and there was a possum in the yard and it ate some apple from her hand,” he said.
They decided to put up the boxes “since people have chopped down most of the big trees with hollows”. “If you don’t put them up, they end up in people’s rooves and places like that.”
He said you don’t have to put the boxes as high as he does – they’re usually happy even when it’s only 3m off the ground.