Our furry, friendly, NOISY housemates.

We have some possums that live at our house. Mummy-Poss and Baby-Poss (who is more teenage-poss now) live in the garage roller-door, and Rednut (his namesake is a possum from my childhood which was named by my Dad) lives in the roof. I am not sure if they are related, but my guess is that Rednut is Baby-poss's father but he doesn't sleep with them as he and Mummy-poss don't get along, though they are still trying to make things work for the sake of Baby-poss.

One evening a couple of weeks ago Grandma, R, and I were sitting up on Grandma's balcony eating dinner when we saw Mummy and Baby possum run from the roller-door, up the drainpipe and past the balcony where we were sitting, onto the roof and into the trees. Since then the possums have been a big hit with R and she frequently gestures for them (she puts her hand up and makes a tsk tsk tsk sound) during the day. I had to explain to her that they were nocturnal and only come out at night.

So most evenings we wait for them with keen anticipation, sometimes we give them a bit of fruit, and we always yell 'Hi there!' and give them a big exaggerated wave. To further the experience for R we have been reading 'Possum Magic' by Mem fox and playing with R's toy plastic possum, sitting it in small trees and such. I belive that this will help R to grasp the concept of symbolism, the notion that there are real possums but also symbolic representations of possums in the form of toys, pictures and words.

Here are some pics of the cute lil critters..


Mummy-poss and Baby-poss

Rednut

Mummy-poss enjoying a Christmas nectarine

Possumy things