Killing a 'Possum

[Amicus]

Interesting dinner hour. It began with me, holding a shovel in my backyard, considering whether I should bash an injured opossum (that was “playing possum”), and ended with my son and I watching an attractive young LEO, on her last shift in the public sector, with a police captain’s daughter in tow as a ride-along, discharging four rounds of .40 S&W into the opossum at less than three feet.

The whole process reminded me of George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” on a much smaller scale. In the end, I was glad I did not have to kill it in front of my wife, but I kept on thinking about those idiots in Brookline hiding from turkeys.

What is Orwellian or perhaps Kafkaesque about this is that my wife wanted to leave it alone to see if it was just “playing possum.” (We did leave it alone for a while to see if it would recover and leave.) While I am not a hunter, I come from a family of hunters who would never leave an injured animal. By the time we tried to call “animal control” to ask their advice, we could only get the police, who said that they would send someone to “put it in a barrel, take it down to the station, and shoot it.” I said “OK” to that. So, by the time the LEO arrived with her captain’s daughter, the decision had already been made to kill it, and the officer did not really have a different mindset. The problem was now the procedure. She had a several minutes long conversation with someone higher up her food chain on what to do. We watched it breathe.

The officer was very nervous, and told me that she was told to shoot it on site, and I would have to dispose of it. She also said that she had never been involved in a “hazardous situation” before. By drawing her weapon, she was automatically in a “hazardous situation” under department policy. (I confess that trash disposal is tomorrow, and that was in the back of my mind the whole time; I’ve had dead stuff that I picked up in my yard before, and the smell after a week ain’t perfume.)

Afterwards she took pictures and told the ride-along she’d send her a copy.

The first two shots caused it to spasm, it stretched out it left leg almost straight in the air. The third caused the same reaction, and it bent backwards on its spine. With the fourth, it was still.

While my wife held the garbage bag, I shoveled it in, wished the LEO a good future in the business world, and locked the gate. When I went into the house, my wife said, ‘I think we should have left it alone overnight. Sometimes they just freak out and will lie playing dead for hours’ I said, ‘I’ve seen them get up just a few minutes after a threat disappeared,’ and, ‘I’m just glad that I was not the one who had to do it.’

I wonder if that’s true.

 

[Pilgrim]

Last year I found a sick possum on my lawn. I took my .22 revolver and put 6 rounds at point blank range, into its head. It was still alive and squirming. I finally had to hit it with a shovel. I felt real bad that I couldn't put it down quickly.

They die real hard.

 

[massnee]

They should have used a .45...the animal would have disintegrated.

 

[Amicus]

They should have used a .45...the animal would have disintegrated.

Steve,

After it was over, the officer said, 'The problem with the .40 is that it is too big. You really need a shotgun for this.'

I didn't get the "too big" statement, and the shotgun would work if I wanted to fertilize.

BTW, now my wife wants me to dig the bullets out of the grass. I don't recall if the officer picked up the cases. (I assume so, but I would prefer some light if I am going to check.)

 

[massnee]

That is too bad about having to look for the bullets.

On a serious note we all know what the lady PO really needed:

***Thread hi-jack alert***

I finally got my dillon set up to reload .223. When are you going to Harvard next?

 

[Amicus]

This week. Perhaps multiple times. I'll give you a call.

 

[clinotus]

Opossums freak me out enough that I would have mag dumped on it with a .45 and then placed a pillow over it and run the pillow over it with my car.
Twice.

 

[MarkM]

Steve,

After it was over, the officer said, 'The problem with the .40 is that it is too big. You really need a shotgun for this.'

Yep, just rack the shotgun and it will die from fear

 

[O/U]

Wow. 3 rounds from a .40 to kill a possum at that range? That's downright dangerous.

 

[ArmedMainer]

Wow. 3 rounds from a .40 to kill a possum at that range? That's downright dangerous.

Where the heck is a range officer when you need one?

 

[News Shooter]

I shot one with a .22 rifle once. It curled up into a ball and I assumed it was dead. I went back into the garage to get a shovel and when I came out the thing was gone

 

[boomerang]

Maybe the officer needed to be in a "hazardous situation".
I would think that beating the animal's brains in with a shovel would be safer and more humane than her blasting the shit out of it.
That is, unless all you had was a snow shovel.

Maybe animal control was away on vacation. I thought the standard procedure is to tell you to to go call the critter control company on your own money.

 

[vellnueve]

Interesting dinner hour. It began with me, holding a shovel in my backyard, considering whether I should bash an injured opossum (that was “playing possum”), and ended with my son and I watching an attractive young LEO, on her last shift in the public sector, with a police captain’s daughter in tow as a ride-along, discharging four rounds of .40 S&W into the opossum at less than three feet.

I thought attractive LEOs were banned in Massachusetts. Maybe why she's leaving the PD?

Besides that, nothing wrong with shooting it, although 3 feet is a bit close. I would have used a shotgun as well, loaded with birdshot.

 

[N.E. CHARTERS]

Im SHOCKED!

 

[In_God_We_Trust]

You could electrocute it:

XREP is a self-contained, wireless projectile that fires from a standard 12-gauge shotgun. It delivers the same Neuro-Muscular Incapacitation (NMI) bio-effect as our handheld TASER X26, but can be delivered to a distance of up to 100 feet, combining blunt impact with field proven TASER NMI....

The TASER XREP launch velocity is approximately 300 feet per second....

Or... You could hit it with 00 Buck, if that animal is such a bad a**

 

[Jaxon]

They're very tough to kill. No central nervous system. Or so I'm told.

I once ran over one with my cruiser late one night, in my usual cloaked fashion. Damn thing was so big I thought I'd run over a person. When I got out to look, it was walking across the road as if nothing had happened.

I dispatched another one with a pike pole (from the FD) one evening that was in a basement window well.

Never had the opportunity to shoot one.

 

[vellnueve]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opossum

Says the best thing to do is leave it alone and it'll eventually walk away.

Weird.

 

[Doctordrew]

i once found a baby one in my trach barrel...my dad and i took it into the middle of my yard and let it go, after about 15 min it slowly looked around and walked away.. there cool little critters.

 

[depicts]

If you find an animal that seems sick in your yard, you shouldn't shoot it or smash it with a shovel.

If it has rabies, and sick animals are the ones who do, and any saliva gets on your skin in the process of smashing or shooting, you might contract rabies from it if you have so much as a slight cut on your exposed skin, or if it touches your mucus membrane or eyes.

Let an animal control officer take care of it if you can. If someone has to shoot it, don't get so close when you do that the spray touches you.

Make sure you don't touch any of the saliva when you shovel it into the plastic bag.

The series of shots you have to get for rabies is very painful, in the site of the bite/contact, and you need a total of 9 shots.

Don't ask me how I know.

 

[Amicus]

Well, now I feel kinda crappy about letting the whole situation go from "wait and see" to letting the police shoot the critter. My experience with wounded opossums is that they will leave the area within a few minutes after the threat disappears. Well, I really thought he was injured badly; there was blood.

 

[vellnueve]

Don't kick yourself. If he was bleeding, he probably was injured.

 

[MassMark]

Don't beat yourself up too much Amicus - you did what you thought was right. It's not necessarily what I would have done, but we live in different places and may even have different concepts of nature - neither of which may be right or wrong. I live in the middle of nowhere and am surrounded by hundreds of acres of conservation land. I also developed a concept having spent much time in Africa photographing and observing wildlife to largely let nature run it's course. I have dispatched animals that were severly injured by the side of the road after being struck by a car, but have left other amimals seemingly in distress alone to the whims of nature.

I had a skunk that was living underneath my back screened porch. He was no bother really and didn't even seem phased by my dog, who for some reason was not phased by it either - weird. Occasionally, I would get a little whiff at night, but then one night all hell broke loose. I heard what only can be described as horrific screaming in the back yard. I grabbed my spotlight and headed for the back porch to nearly be overcome with the smell of skunk. I plugged my nose, flipped on my light and watched as a fisher visciously attacked the skunk. I shut off my light and retreated inside to close all the windows - the smell was astounding. Early the next morning, I went out to find bits of skunk fur and some blood scattered about the back yard. That evening, I saw the poor skunk barely crawling across the yard. I felt so bad for it, that I actually grabbed my Benelli and contemplated dispatching it - putting it out of it's misery. My thoughts went back to my time in Africa and I painfully decided to let it be. That was 2-years ago and that damned skunk is still holed-up under my porch. He walks with a limp and has a permanent patch of hair gone, but he's old fat and happy - my wife planted cherry tomatoes for him next to the porch so he would stay out of the garden - it worked... Again, I don't think you made a wrong choice - only you know your circumstances.

On another survival note, many years ago I was living in Northeast Ohio. My company car was a new 1988 Saab 900s. I was tooling along down Route 62 at about 80-miles per hour at 2 in the morning when I spotted a possum in the road and slammed on my brakes. Too late, I smacked him good. I kept going for home (about 25-miles away) and pulled into my driveway. When I shut the car off and got out, I heard a hissing sound. I thought: "shit, I must have punctured a radiator hose or something". Wron. The possum was shoved into the plastic air dam under my bumper and was hissing! I grabbed a flashlight and sure enough, that little bastard was alive and kicking, (or hissing). I used a swimming pool skimmer pole to shove him back out through the air dam and he hobbled off into the night on three legs, the third dangling behind him. My mother fed him cat food and cookies for years until one day he stopped coming back...

You never know with nature my friend. You may have done the little guy a big favor - maybe not. You did what you thought was right and in the best interest of your family and the animal.

 

[Pilgrim]

The one I had to 'dispatch' had spent most of the day on my lawn. I watched him and it appeared his back was broken as his hind end was dragging and occasionally flopping seeming uncontrolled by its owner. He was definitely in big distress.

I really felt bad that I wasn't able to do him in quickly.