Emergency Prep · Wildlife
The Opossum Rescue Guide
Triage and Care for America's Marsupial
Fifty teeth, a hiss, and a dead faint: the opossum is all bluff. 10 modules on playing possum vs. actually dead, checking a dead mother's pouch for live joeys, black frostbitten ears and tails, dog-bite punctures that turn septic, Metabolic Bone Disease from the wrong kindness, the scoop (never the tail), darkness and heat for shock, reading the hiss, fleas and the surprisingly low rabies risk, and finding a marsupial-savvy rehabber.
About this course
Opossums are the most misunderstood animal in the yard: a toothy, hissing, drooling bluff on top of a gentle, slow, cold-running marsupial that would rather faint than fight. This course teaches you to see through the show. You'll learn that playing possum is an involuntary coma that can last hours and how to tell it from death, how to check a road-killed female's pouch for joeys that can live 24 to 48 hours after she dies, why bare ears and tails go black in winter, why a dog bite that looks like nothing becomes an abscess and sepsis within two days, how table scraps and all-meat diets give opossums rubber bones, why you never lift one by the tail and how the scoop method works, why total darkness and half-box heat are the two things a shocked opossum needs (and food and water are not), what the hiss actually means, why their low body temperature makes rabies rare but their fleas carry typhus, and why they need a rehabber who understands marsupials.
What you'll learn
- Playing possum: the involuntary coma, and telling it from death
- The pouch check on a deceased female, and the joeys that survive her
- Frostbite, dog-bite punctures and sepsis, and Metabolic Bone Disease
- The scoop method (never the tail), and dark, hard-sided transport
- Darkness and heat for shock, no food or water, and decoding the hiss
- Fleas, typhus, the low rabies risk, and finding a marsupial-savvy rehabber
Who this is for
Anyone who's found an opossum 'dead' on the lawn and then not dead, drivers who stop for road-killed mothers, dog owners, people who've been feeding one, and rescue volunteers who want to get marsupials right.
Course outline (10 modules)
Quiz & Certificate
Knowledge quiz
After completing all lessons, take a short quiz to test your understanding.
Go to quiz →Completion certificate
Pass the quiz and earn a shareable certificate of completion.
View certificate →Frequently asked questions
Ready to get started?
$9.99 · Lifetime access · 10 lessons