NO MENTION OF CATS

Possum throwing 'immoral'- SPCA

(Thanks to Horace LaBadie)

Comments

[padraig]

How about if we put someone at the other end with a big soft catcher's mitt? Y'know, to save the dead possums any pain or trauma.

[Punkin]

Who would want their kid fondling a creepy carcass of an animal that might have even died of rabies?

[bonmot]

Kiwi possums apparently have Klopnicky tails.

[Ross]

We don't have rabies in New Zea1and, and yes, the Australian possums that invaded us have got furry tails. The possums would have been killed by trapping.

[OC Dolphin]

Somewhere a group of "vertically challenged" bar dwellers feel their pain.

[Horace LaBadie]

"Don't play with your food," as we say in the South.

[bonmot]

A New Zealander man,
with a permanent tan,
that's a Maori!

[Bob]

Used to be that you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a possum tossing contest.

[Ralph]

Biological note: The Viginia Opossum and the Austrailian Brush-tailed Possum are distant relatives; both are marsupials, but the Possum (no "O") is more closely related to kangaroos. They can be very destructive. Except for the animals-are-people crowd, they get about as much respect in New Zealand as rabbits do in Australia or rats do in Brooklyn. Most Kiwis would love to throw them all out of the country, not just across the schoolyard.

[Steve]

Someone has to say it: that's disgusting.
If you want to lend excitement to your child's life, tell him or her to grab a live opossum from the other end.
I once grabbed a baby groundhog when my brother-in-law stopped the car and yelled, "Grab it, Steve!"
He later confessed to being curious. He wanted to know if I was stupid enough to do it.
I was.

[Wes S.]

Wonder if it's "immoral" to toss SPCA busybodies instead...?

[Steve D]

Possum non potest. (The one other reader who knows Latin can explain it to you.)

As long as people are going OT with groundhogs, etc., I got an armadillo story. I was driving a rural road in Texas when an armadillo ambled (moseyed? sashayed? I can never keep them straight) across the road. I stopped the car and got some close up pictures. He waddled over to the fence line and curled up in a ball. Aha, says I, I know how this works, so I got a stick. Plan was to roll him back out in the open. As soon as I touched him with the stick, he was off down that fence line like a SHOT. They sure don't look like they can run that fast.

[OK, in response to absolutely underwhelming demand, "possum" means "I can" in Latin. "Potest" means "he/she can." Since the possum is dead, non potest. Clear? I didn't think so. Cya.]

[mudstuffin]

i think it's shocking that in this day and age so many people think it's o.k. to interrupt a fun and harmless activity with a bunch up self-righteous and hysterical blather.

oh, and won't somebody think of the children?

[bonmot]

I don't understand how possums have made it this far.

They're slow; they don't have fangs, claws or quills, and their defense mechanism is to play dead?! Does that really ever stop a hungry bobcat or fox?

Or do they really just taste so bad that nothing predates them?