Into the wild

We released Banjo the brushtail possum back into the wild on the weekend. Into the wilds of John and Kara's backyard to be exact.

John and Kara have about as much lawn in their backyard as your average English backyard, except they live on about half an acre, the rest is trees and bushes. You can imagine how it would be possum heaven. When John offered his place as a release site for a possum we jumped at the chance, as release sites are so hard to come by.

Normally when we release a possum it's done as a soft-release, that means putting them in an aviary on the property for about a week or so to get them used to the smells and the local vegetation. After about a week a door is left open in the evenings and the animal is allowed to come and go as it pleases. Eventually, after a couple more weeks they don't bother returning to the aviary as they've usually found somewhere else to live.

We weren't able to get another aviary for Banjo, so we did the next best thing, we got him a possum box. We put that in his cage one afternoon and gave him about a week to get him used to it. We thought it would take him that long to wean him off the drey he'd been sleeping in. We were wrong, he moved in that night.



So the time came when we could say, in best Big Brother fashion, "It's time to go... Banjo".

As I said, John and Kara have a lot of trees on their property, so it took a while to find one we were so spoilt for choice. Actually, it also took a while because I kept walking up the wrong garden paths and getting lost and I had to keep stopping to kill mosquitoes. John commented that they breed mossies there. You're doing an excellent job of it John.



Once Banjo was installed in his new home it was time to do what all good Englishmen do (John and I are both Poms) and have a cup of tea. Then it was home to work on the new aviary I'm building for the tawny frogmouths, while Donna went out to rescue a young figbird that'd been attacked by a cat.

Last night was the first rain since Banjo moved, so he's probably a bit annoyed with us right now. The last possum we released, Clive, used to be unlucky with the weather. Every time he got moved to a bigger cage it would rain that night.