Opossums live only 1-2 years in the wild, 2-3 years in captivity. They tend to have a rough childhood, between oncoming cars and dogs who don’t like them in their back yards. Many become orphans, or are assumed to be forgotten by mama, as they are only about 4 inches long from the base of their tail to the tips of their noses when they are sent off to “opossum college”. Animal Tracks has had many opossums throughout the years. There has to be a health reason for a native animal to find its way to us – and so many of our opossums come to us in an imperfect state. You may not know, but opossums are the only North American marsupial, and the females have a pouch just like a kangaroo. Humans live better when there are opossums in our neighborhoods. They will eat approximately 30,000 ticks in their lifetime. Deer ticks are the number one carrier of Lyme disease. So if opossums don’t exist where you are, Lyme disease rates will jump drastically, and a healthy population of opossums will help out tremendously. Most people think they look like a rat, and despise their bald tails – but that tail is actually prehensiled, and works like a fifth hand – they are nature’s sanitation engineers! This little animal gets a really bad rap, when in reality it should be celebrated. They are considerate enough to come out at night when we are sleeping and clean up the environment and then tuck themselves in to a tree hollow and sleep the day away. You could go through your entire life without ever seeing an opossum in your neighborhood.