Fresh possum meat

Neeek · 11-07-2007, 10:18 AM

We seem to have a good supply of the stuff at our place. Allow me to explain....

Maggie, my two-year old Rotty-cross-Staffy loves possums. She watches them intently of an evening down by the garage as they scurry across the tin roof. She watches them when they rut in the trees making odd noises. She watches them when they watch her. She watches them all the time.

So Mags has been known to catch the occasional possum in her time. Her first was a baby one that was barely the size of my hand. It had clearly fallen out of a tree and she was only trying to have a little play with it. My wife got up to find our 6-month-old puppy standing over a small little creature wagging her tail in a demented fashion as if to say "LOOK WHAT I'VE GOT!!!!". The dog was shooed away, the possum was placed back in a tree, and that was it.

All was calm again for a while, until a similar event occurred which resulted in the first confirmed kill. But that one was a little bit tricky, so I won't go into it here.

More recently I experienced perhaps the funniest moment that I have ever heard of betwixt man and dog. We connected; we communicated. I came home from work and found half a medium-sized animal (the size of a fat hamster) in the back garden. It was clearly a possum, no question. I recognized its front half, but everything from the middle to the back-end was gone, like a car that'd been smashed in the rear quarter by a truck doing 200km/h. It was... just... gone. Maggie was in the garden, looking slightly uncomfortable. She looked at me. I asked her in full voice "OK, where's the rest of it?" at which point there was a pause for a second or two – as if Maggie was processing the question. Then she delivered her answer, and dutifully threw-up the back half of a possum right in front of me, right on cue. I could only assume that it was the missing tail-section, and just after my eyes had recovered from being blown-up to the size of dinner plates I burst out laughing and damn nearly choked on my own spit.

Last night, at about 11pm, I hear the dog running around to the other side of the house and the familiar cries of a possum about to meet its maker after scurrying across the roof at breakneck speed. So again, I get up and call the dog. She doesn't come. On go the clothes, and I venture outside into the cold. I find her in the back garden and the moment she sees me, she comes and sits by my side, all apologetic. She knows she's done wrong. Not only has she got her biggest possum yet (the size of a well-fed cat, I kid you not), but she's managed to knock down my lemon tree AND smash a paling out of the fence. So I go and look her up inside the house and grab the four D-cell Maglight, just incase I need to put something out of its misery… not something I’m looking forward to doing.

By the time I go back out, the marsupial has expired and is motionless. How it died I don't know, but it's clearly been a bit of a toy for a few seconds in the mouth of my dog, as there's slobber all over it. But no puncture wounds… interesting. Instead of grabbing my scalpel and surgery gown and performing an impromptu autopsy on the little critter I grab my hammer and nails to fix the fence. Then I re-stake my lemon tree, which was clearly subject to 30-odd kilos of hound flying sideways into it (probably shortly before hitting the fence and breaking that) and decide to deal with the deceased in the morning. Which I dutifully did at 6.30am today by unceremoniously stuffing it into a plastic bag, tying it up and dumping it in the wheelie bin… which only got emptied that morning… bugger.

So clearly Maggie like possums. Perhaps a little too much. From now on she'll be sleeping on the verandah with the outside door locked; I have no desire to keep throwing possums in the bin, and frankly I can't bear to think of my dog as a murderer.

A colleague said to me this morning "Isn't it nice to know that some animal instincts remain even though a dog can be domesticated?".

Yes, and no. In equal measure.

Maggie 1
Possum 0

Serial_Fool · 11-07-2007, 10:35 AM

Nice dog you have there

EdFairmontGhia · 11-07-2007, 11:22 AM

what other tricks does your dog know?

Neeek · 11-07-2007, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EdFairmontGhia

what other tricks does your dog know?

Mags is well-versed in the art of face-licking, looking sad ("they beat me and starve me...") and inhaling food through her nostrils.

GreenMachine · 11-07-2007, 11:47 AM

Like I told you last time - possums are just bush junk, Maggie is higher up the foodchain and she's unlikely to hunt them in to extinction. The real trick is teaching her to do the same thing to strangers and the cat that puts scratches down my bonnet...

Ringo · 11-07-2007, 01:15 PM

Yep...Possums.

Used to have two cats when I was living with Mum and Dad. One was a little bit wild the other was fully domesticated eating/sleeping/patting version.

Stepped out the back door one morning to find a possum tail and some yucky bits (intestine) but nothing else....and two cats there were not hungry for breakfast.

The kill instinct is a bit of worry....my two puppies would just want to bark at them...as they do now!

In fact Neek our dogs may be related because they can do that "they beat me and starve me...take me home and love me" look as well....

boss-290 · 11-07-2007, 01:23 PM

Why is this funny?

Clearly your dog is disobedient..

Simmo · 11-07-2007, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boss-290

Why is this funny?

Clearly your dog is disobedient..

hence him locking it up on the verandah with no yard access. to an active dog like a rotty/staffy cross, no yard is like saying 'no tv' to a kid these days.

GreenMachine · 11-07-2007, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boss-290

Why is this funny?

Clearly your dog is disobedient..

How do you train a dog not to eat possums? Giving it a flogging when you wake up an hour after the fact will do nothing... I don't see how you can train this out of what is basically a predatory animal.

*note: I can't believe I'm defending Neeek's dog.

fiery · 11-07-2007, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boss-290

Why is this funny?

Clearly your dog is disobedient..

The reaction is the funny part not the actual act. Goodness sake, he is trying what he can by locking the dog up at night.

Whilst it isn't funny anything killing anything, it will happen in the wild, to the dog and the possum that backyard is their 'wild'.

I think Neeek has taken the responsible owners position and removed the dog from the naughty instead of being cruel and belting the dog for it way to late after the fact. Well done

Neeek · 11-07-2007, 02:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boss-290

Why is this funny?

Because I thought it was. I wasn't pleased at the time, but it gave me cause to tell a story this morning when I got to work. You don't have to like it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by boss-290

Clearly your dog is disobedient..

Clearly you've never met my dog. And perhaps you don't know how to discipline one either.

Granted, there are things that she doesn't do well (like coming back to me in the off-lead area - we're working on it), but she sits, she stays, she pays attention when we give her commands and recently we've managed to get her to walk on the lead without pulling excessively. All of which is what she learnt at obedience school, and is continuing to learn with the odd refresher course.

As GM said, there is no way in the world I can reprimand her for gorging herself on possums unless I'm there at the precise moment she does so. Punishing a dog after the thing she was doing that requires punishment has elapsed, is futile. She won't understand why she was punished, and she never will. All she'll do is get in a grump because she doesn't know what she did wrong. And thus, she will never learn not to do what she did.

An example I'll use here is GM's dog, which actually bit me (first time for me, yay!). I approached the dog incorrectly and got a nice bite on my hand for my trouble. I was so surprised that I completely forgot to reprimand the dog at the time, and after a few seconds I realised that no amount of my telling it off would have any effect on him whatsoever. As far as he was concerned, the moment had passed and I'd be telling him off for sitting in the back of a ute, which isn't right or fair on the little bugger.

Dog's aren't as smart as we are. And perhaps most important of all, they have what are called "animal instincts" which are damn near impossible to suppress completely.

MotherNatureVer2 · 11-07-2007, 02:49 PM

Not sure if I would say dogs are not as smart as us Neeek ...... hehehehe........ Some of them have more brains than their owners ..... Yes this is a primal instinct that no one is going to get rid of. Those of us who have dogs such as these will all have tales to tell Im sure ;)

I personally think you have done the right thing to remove her from the area. I will also add that you have a great way of describing an incident that most of us wouldnt have in a forum :P Thanks for the giggle ;)

GreenMachine · 11-07-2007, 02:51 PM

Agreed, Mother - Very few people can recount the story of their dog regurgitating wildlife as well as Neeek can...

While we're discussing this, has anyone got a way of stopping my dog eating station wagon owners?

Neeek · 11-07-2007, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GreenMachine

While we're discussing this, has anyone got a way of stopping my dog eating station wagon owners?

Remove the station wagon owner from the dog, I'd say.

Sourbastard · 11-07-2007, 03:31 PM

This is Buford. He is a Rotty cross Bull Mastiff and weighs in at about 50kg now.

Unfortunately the possums around our place wont go down to play with him and hurl gumnuts and moss at him from the roof.

Neeek · 11-07-2007, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sourbastard

This is Buford. He is a Rotty cross Bull Mastiff and weighs in at about 50kg now.

Unfortunately the possums around our place wont go down to play with him and hurl gumnuts and moss at him from the roof.

Hope you haven't got any lemon trees in your garden, Dave. I'd be absolutely horrified to think what kind of pain a travelling-sideways-at-speed Buford might inflict on one... ;)

Sourbastard · 11-07-2007, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neeek

Hope you haven't got any lemon trees in your garden, Dave. I'd be absolutely horrified to think what kind of pain a travelling-sideways-at-speed Buford might inflict on one... ;)

you should see what he can do to a car panel when chasing after pidgeons.

kremmen · 11-07-2007, 04:40 PM

Heres a photo of titan. He has had his share of possums and bats, used to catch bats as they drop out of trees to begin their flight, he times his jumps to coincide with their trajectory - only did it twice before he worked out the bats made him very ill for a week or so.
The 3 second rule applies to dogs, if you catch them doin something wrong - then reprimand them in the next 3 seonds or its worthless. Just getting rid of your frustrations doesn't help the dog.
Dogs are higher up the foodchain than possums, hence dogs eat em - if they are dumb enough to come into the yard.

Neeek · 11-07-2007, 04:50 PM

Go Titan! I don't think Mags is big enough to jump that high.

Here's the possum exterminator herself... clearly, she hypnotises them with her freakish eyes (which may or may not have something to do with the flash)

kremmen · 11-07-2007, 04:53 PM

The medusa stare gets em every time....

go mags!!

Simmo · 11-07-2007, 04:56 PM

jeez Neeek, stick to wagons, your photography is terrible

BAFalconXT · 11-07-2007, 05:05 PM

My girlfriends dog is a boxer cross staffy, and shes been brought up on a farm and was encouraged to chase rabbits and cats

. She keeps up with a 4 x 4 at 50km/h for 10km. Now she lives in the city, we can't let her off the chain or she will chase anything small(including dogs) and any dog or person that yells/barks.

Shes a good protector though, she tried to attack this drunk bum that came up to me the other day.

SomeBloke · 11-07-2007, 05:05 PM

We had a Rotty malamute cross that loved possums..

The only Cleanup was :
plucked fur
intestine
Jaw bones

70caprigt3k · 11-07-2007, 05:17 PM

Of a morning we usually have to pick up random bits of possum usually heads and tails but funnily enough its not the dogs that kill the possums, its the cat and i don't know how it does it because some of the possums she kills look bigger than her!

R0BD0G · 11-07-2007, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boss-290

Why is this funny?

Clearly your dog is disobedient..

i got a great laugh outta this...mi cat used to get possums and play with them like throw em in the air and stuff....then he got hit by a car...

[Tonko] · 11-07-2007, 11:59 PM

Reminds me of my uncles Scottish terrier thing, It liked to tease Koalas, every day and all night it would bark or run around and nip them while they drank from the river out the back, until he was slashed by a huge one...
I hated that dog...

But my labrador loved rabbits, all we would find is fur everywhere and he was never hungry though, i guess bunnies are very filling...

Eb Barbie · 12-07-2007, 10:46 AM

We had the same troubles with our Rottweiler and possums. Came outside one morning to find a large size possum on the back verander all in good nick apart from a missing hand. I'd say she tried to play with it and scared it to death. Another time we had spotted a HUGE possum in the back trees hoping it would leave and not go to ground level. It was like a very large koala in the tree. Next day, sure enough it was not a survivor, lying in the backyard, no harm done apart from a few tuffs of hair missing. She used to play with them but obviously it frightened the poor buggers and was too much for them.