Woman Lets An Elderly Possum Stay In Her Garage, Her Nephew Posts Pic Online And It Goes Viral
“Gotta admit, that’s one ugly cat,” says a comment on a r/aww thread about an unusual lodger who has taken up residence in someone’s aunt’s garage: an opossum. Hank, as he’s affectionately called, may not have the charm of the puppies and kitties that make up most of the posts on the subreddit for all things cute, but the story’s wholesomeness has Redditors talking about why we should be thankful for opossums, which are often casually called possums in North America.
A Reddit user from Louisiana says that the old, grumpy-looking animal has been a frequent visitor at their aunt’s house for a couple of years. With winter approaching, he began sleeping in the garage, so she showed him some good old Southern hospitality and put out a blanket and snacks for him. Though Hank certainly isn’t a pet, he seems to have come to an understanding that her garage is a safe haven for him.
Hank is a big hit on r/aww
Opossums only live for 2-3 years, so Hank may not be around for long, but the Louisiana resident is happy to let him spend his old age somewhere where he’ll be safe from predators. And, as commenters point out, leaving opossums to do their thing is a great way to keep ticks and other dangerous pests under control. If you’re wondering how they catch so many ticks, it turns out that they just groom themselves constantly, so any tick that lands on them becomes a snack. Wildlife experts say that opossums clean up bugs, garden pests such as slugs, and rotting fruit, and even hunt venomous snakes. After doing such good service for his community, Hank deserves a comfortable retirement, don’t you think?
Scroll down for some cute opossum pics and facts about why these misunderstood animals make great neighbors and you shouldn’t bother them if you see them in your neighborhood!
Image credits: INKgear
Image credits: Land Between the Lakes
Image credits: InnerFish
Image credits: Overlordzelli
We have a possum that lives in our yard, we call him Larry. Larry is huge much larger than our Chihuahuas. Larry eats the scraps we leave out for him, he doesn't bother the Chihuahuas.
my sister had one she raised from a baby orphan (his momma & brothers & sisters were all squished in the street out in front of my house - it was SO sad). his name was Pistachio & he was the sweetest little guy baby ever. altho she tried to find a rescue to take him, she was unable to so we learned a lot about how to best take care of them & what to feed them. he lived about 2yrs - she rly did a great job. he was a cutie pie <3
We left a ladder against our house one day and we can see it from our couch through the living room window. Immediately squirrels and a raccoon and a possum started using it. (Within 24 hours). They go up and down day and night so we left it. Sometimes we open the window and put nuts on the sill and the squirrels will work all day grabbing them one by one coming down and and going back up to a hole in our attic somewhere.
that is pretty darn cute. you should make a bored panda article w pix for us plz!! :D
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I like that she provided the old gentleman with a safe place to get some much-needed rest in his dotage. We live in a house that has a couple old tumbledown chicken houses in the field behind it. Earlier this year, I noticed an old fox who dragged one back leg had apparently moved into one of the old chicken houses. That useless leg didn’t keep him from hunting mice and voles in the field, though. I have video of him pouncing and eating to his heart’s content. I decided then and there that he could live back there as long as he liked; no one would bother him. Peaceful coexistence. Haven’t seen him in a couple weeks. If he’s still alive, I hope he’s comfortable and has enough to eat. If he died, I hope he enjoyed his last few months in our back field. He was most welcome to it.
We have a couple opposum living under our porch. Been there for a couple years. They are such a cute couple. We feed them nightly. I've been told they never stick around in one place for long but its been two years.... Love watching them on our cam.
i love opossums! i feed some colony cats and they all share food. it's been unusually chilly where i live so i opened my shed and made beds for the cats. i've noticed at night after the cat goes to bed, the opossum comes to eat, then i see him saunter into the shed too. i guess they've made their own family in there.
one time i told my family i saw one outside and my sister said "Did it hiss?" and i was like "No, it just ran away but i love him" and she said "opossums are ugly" and :-( one of my friends and i literally spend our time talking about how cute rats and opossums are and we send each other photos
The only ones that have hissed at me are mothers with their babies clinging to them. Understandable that they’d be so defensive. Otherwise, if you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone and just go about their business eating ticks and other pests.
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I want a neighbourhood possum... they really are sweet harmless things
Where i live we don't have possums what we do have is a lot of European hedgehogs. They also keep pests at bay so we love to have them in our garden. They live in our garden underneath some brushwood we feed them and give them water everyday. Normaly they do live alone but our garden is big enough for more than one apparently. We don't see thet verry often but if we go outside when it is dark we can hear them walking around and if we are lucky they cross our path. Unfortunately we had one that we found dead yesterday infront of our door it is sad to find them like that. They are also the type of animal that get run over a lot here sadly enough.
I’ll never look at possums as something to be afraid of again. I’ve seen one or two in my yard at different times & they’ve hissed at me, showing their teeth & claws, but I now realized they were just afraid of me as I was of them. Not that I would make one a pet, but I would consider leaving them food now. I think because we have a couple fruit trees & I leave seed out for the birds & peanuts for the squirrels, the possums & raccoons are now visitors too. I love animals, but it looks like I might need a part time job because I love to feed them. Watching the squirrels are so much fun. I have wooden boxes with lids & they’ve learned to open & close them when they come around. It was hilarious when one came up on the porch to look in the window & my husband said it was his way of saying, “Hey lady, we’re out of nuts!”
I once worked at a Los Angeles County government agency. A lady came into the office one day with a big cardboard box. Inside were three baby possums, orphaned when their mother was killed by a car. She had put a blanket inside the box, plus tiny bowls of milk, water, and grapes cut in half. She was going to give them to a woman she knew who had a possum rescue. I was glad she was able to smuggle them into the building, so they wouldn't have to be alone all day!
Weve got 3 that come for the cat food I call them Alberta because shes huge and fat and Ive seen her with babies Speedy hes normal sized and runs like lightning And Buster hes just a little baby and not very bright.....or he just has bad vision either way he bonked his head on a wall trying to run from our elderly black lab But there all harmless if skittish except Alberta she really doesnt give a c**p and waddles away The only time she actually got aggressive was when she had 3 babies on her back and she took off when I went to get the mail and one fell off and laid on the ground crying I didnt know what to do and stepped towards it she rushed back hissing like a demon from the deepest bowls of hell snagged him in her mouth and took off again
Our opossum like to pray before she eats the left over cat food on the deck...KENT praying-op...570755.jpg 
I really like the way your aunt is taking care of Hank. I also read somewhere that they are not harmful. I think they are kind of cute. Love the pictures.
I love Hank! He's a handsome old man. I'm glad this woman has such a huge heart. *hearts*
We don't have them here, too bad, they are cute and do much good for the area they live in !!!
My best bud left my house (we were about 16 years old) and found a possum on the brick wall that separated our streets. So he nudged it all the way down the wall (about 300 feet) until he came to the end. He pushed it off and jumped down. The possum just let itself be corralled all the way back to his house. He was able to put it in a old rabbit hutch. He call me in the morning and told me what happened and to come over and take a look at it. I came over and I found babies crawling around on it. We made pets out of them. They were so cool but are nocturnal so my friends mom made us put them away outside at night after they destroyed her curtains. We had 9 babies and none of us ever got bit. We were able to let them all wander off when they got bigger and they hung around for over a year.
My daughter's elementary school library raised an orphaned possum one year. Posey was adorable, and at the end of the year she was released to the wild. We also learned that it's perfectly safe for a human to raise a possum and then release it to the wild because possum brains are so small they don't have room to imprint on people. So go ahead and make friends, you won't be disrupting its natural life!
I adore possums. Kentucky girl. Gentle, sweet-natured, nonaggressive critters. Good company.
Very interesting. I used to think that possums are gross (after all, their mouths are scary and they look weird, don't they?). I'm glad I learned how harmless they are and how good for pest control they are.
We have several possums... I put food out for them and really think they are wonderful!💕
I have a constant nighttime stream of the local possums on my back patio, where I set out cat kibble and water. I'm in Austin, Texas. I can sit at my computer desk and watch them from my window. It has been such fun to watch the younger possums grown up. Four have shared the food dish at the same time--I'm sure they're siblings. Large adults come too. I also get a mated pair of raccoons. They're HUGE, but are happy to share the food with the possums. A couple of times I watched a raccoon lie down to wait for a possum to finish eating. So endearing! I have never understood why many people find possums ugly. They're adorable.
What a nice person that aunt is. I'd like to know her, and and her possum friend. We have possums, raccoons, and skunks, (in the city). They're all friendly. It's a myth by the way that raccoons attack dogs, cats, or people. They absolutely do not. Some dogs will attack raccoons, and other small animals though. Please be kind to all animals. Personally, I sometimes prefer them to people.
I do not agree with Miniii in the article when she says possums are cute!! Look at those little faces with the pink dot nose
Unless you have a horse or are near horses, opossums are a primary carrier of a potentially deadly disease to horses. http://www.epmhorse.org/The_Disease/Opossum.htm
FIRST LET ME SAY... I AM A HORSE PERSON, but I am an open minded horse person, most are not..... the study blaming opossums was done back in the mid 1960's... 67 I think. IT'S OUTDATED AND SINCE THEN BEEN PROVED FALSE. Now to dispute the professor who did this study who is still alive seems not to be happening, however studies have been done by the University of Missouri that prove the "barn cat' is most likely to culprit as well as any other wildlife and birds.... not just the opossum. 2001 study... "Horses are considered EPM's aberrant hosts because only schizonts and merozoites (no sarcocysts) are found in horses. EPM-like disease occurs in a variety of mammals including cats, mink, raccoons, skunks, Pacific harbor seals, ponies, and Southern sea otters. Cats can act as an experimental intermediate host harboring the sarcocyst stage after ingesting sporocysts. This paper reviews information on the history, structure, life cycle, biology, pathogenesis, induction of disease in animal
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Opossums really are SUPER sweet!!! I have a family of 4 children that I'm really good friends with. They live in the forest, and the reason we are good friends is because when they were babys, they were freezing and starving and the night before my dogs apparently killed their mother. Because I'm who I am, I couldn't let them suffer so I kinda took em under my wing for a bit...
I assume most ignorant Americans think they are large rats. As such, they are targeted by people who WANT to run them over. I'm glad we have none in the area--we have just such a driver in my neighborhood. He went around the block twice to make sure he ran over a cat.
I had a pregnant opossum die in the crawl space under my house. Both my wife and I are disabled so we couldn't crawl under there and drag her bloated, smelly body out so I had to pay a guy $100 to go get it. He wretched quite a few times but got her out. I also paid his dump fee and a tank full of gas. After that, we shrunk the size of our cat doors, lol. No more possums, thankfully.
apparently we have opossums on Vancouver Island. I learned that today. They have been spotted in Victoria BC and over 600 were trapped on Hornby Island. Wow.
This makes me sad that my dogs played with 2 of them to death. The dogs didn't eat them, but they weren't just playing possum either. 2 possums and 3 birds, these dogs are serial killers.
Sadly they also carry Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis so they aren't welcome around horses. But they are cute!
That's an intelligent response to any wild animal.
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the way that they were saying "possum" instead of opossum was really bothering me lol
agree! They are completely different animals, I wonder where the confusion came from?
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Possum pee smells absolutely terrible. I hope Hank does his business outside.
We have a possum that lives in our yard, we call him Larry. Larry is huge much larger than our Chihuahuas. Larry eats the scraps we leave out for him, he doesn't bother the Chihuahuas.
my sister had one she raised from a baby orphan (his momma & brothers & sisters were all squished in the street out in front of my house - it was SO sad). his name was Pistachio & he was the sweetest little guy baby ever. altho she tried to find a rescue to take him, she was unable to so we learned a lot about how to best take care of them & what to feed them. he lived about 2yrs - she rly did a great job. he was a cutie pie <3
We left a ladder against our house one day and we can see it from our couch through the living room window. Immediately squirrels and a raccoon and a possum started using it. (Within 24 hours). They go up and down day and night so we left it. Sometimes we open the window and put nuts on the sill and the squirrels will work all day grabbing them one by one coming down and and going back up to a hole in our attic somewhere.
that is pretty darn cute. you should make a bored panda article w pix for us plz!! :D
Load More Replies... I like that she provided the old gentleman with a safe place to get some much-needed rest in his dotage. We live in a house that has a couple old tumbledown chicken houses in the field behind it. Earlier this year, I noticed an old fox who dragged one back leg had apparently moved into one of the old chicken houses. That useless leg didn’t keep him from hunting mice and voles in the field, though. I have video of him pouncing and eating to his heart’s content. I decided then and there that he could live back there as long as he liked; no one would bother him. Peaceful coexistence. Haven’t seen him in a couple weeks. If he’s still alive, I hope he’s comfortable and has enough to eat. If he died, I hope he enjoyed his last few months in our back field. He was most welcome to it.
We have a couple opposum living under our porch. Been there for a couple years. They are such a cute couple. We feed them nightly. I've been told they never stick around in one place for long but its been two years.... Love watching them on our cam.
i love opossums! i feed some colony cats and they all share food. it's been unusually chilly where i live so i opened my shed and made beds for the cats. i've noticed at night after the cat goes to bed, the opossum comes to eat, then i see him saunter into the shed too. i guess they've made their own family in there.
one time i told my family i saw one outside and my sister said "Did it hiss?" and i was like "No, it just ran away but i love him" and she said "opossums are ugly" and :-( one of my friends and i literally spend our time talking about how cute rats and opossums are and we send each other photos
The only ones that have hissed at me are mothers with their babies clinging to them. Understandable that they’d be so defensive. Otherwise, if you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone and just go about their business eating ticks and other pests.
Load More Replies... I want a neighbourhood possum... they really are sweet harmless things
Where i live we don't have possums what we do have is a lot of European hedgehogs. They also keep pests at bay so we love to have them in our garden. They live in our garden underneath some brushwood we feed them and give them water everyday. Normaly they do live alone but our garden is big enough for more than one apparently. We don't see thet verry often but if we go outside when it is dark we can hear them walking around and if we are lucky they cross our path. Unfortunately we had one that we found dead yesterday infront of our door it is sad to find them like that. They are also the type of animal that get run over a lot here sadly enough.
I’ll never look at possums as something to be afraid of again. I’ve seen one or two in my yard at different times & they’ve hissed at me, showing their teeth & claws, but I now realized they were just afraid of me as I was of them. Not that I would make one a pet, but I would consider leaving them food now. I think because we have a couple fruit trees & I leave seed out for the birds & peanuts for the squirrels, the possums & raccoons are now visitors too. I love animals, but it looks like I might need a part time job because I love to feed them. Watching the squirrels are so much fun. I have wooden boxes with lids & they’ve learned to open & close them when they come around. It was hilarious when one came up on the porch to look in the window & my husband said it was his way of saying, “Hey lady, we’re out of nuts!”
I once worked at a Los Angeles County government agency. A lady came into the office one day with a big cardboard box. Inside were three baby possums, orphaned when their mother was killed by a car. She had put a blanket inside the box, plus tiny bowls of milk, water, and grapes cut in half. She was going to give them to a woman she knew who had a possum rescue. I was glad she was able to smuggle them into the building, so they wouldn't have to be alone all day!
Weve got 3 that come for the cat food I call them Alberta because shes huge and fat and Ive seen her with babies Speedy hes normal sized and runs like lightning And Buster hes just a little baby and not very bright.....or he just has bad vision either way he bonked his head on a wall trying to run from our elderly black lab But there all harmless if skittish except Alberta she really doesnt give a c**p and waddles away The only time she actually got aggressive was when she had 3 babies on her back and she took off when I went to get the mail and one fell off and laid on the ground crying I didnt know what to do and stepped towards it she rushed back hissing like a demon from the deepest bowls of hell snagged him in her mouth and took off again
Our opossum like to pray before she eats the left over cat food on the deck...KENT praying-op...570755.jpg
I really like the way your aunt is taking care of Hank. I also read somewhere that they are not harmful. I think they are kind of cute. Love the pictures.
I love Hank! He's a handsome old man. I'm glad this woman has such a huge heart. *hearts*
We don't have them here, too bad, they are cute and do much good for the area they live in !!!
My best bud left my house (we were about 16 years old) and found a possum on the brick wall that separated our streets. So he nudged it all the way down the wall (about 300 feet) until he came to the end. He pushed it off and jumped down. The possum just let itself be corralled all the way back to his house. He was able to put it in a old rabbit hutch. He call me in the morning and told me what happened and to come over and take a look at it. I came over and I found babies crawling around on it. We made pets out of them. They were so cool but are nocturnal so my friends mom made us put them away outside at night after they destroyed her curtains. We had 9 babies and none of us ever got bit. We were able to let them all wander off when they got bigger and they hung around for over a year.
My daughter's elementary school library raised an orphaned possum one year. Posey was adorable, and at the end of the year she was released to the wild. We also learned that it's perfectly safe for a human to raise a possum and then release it to the wild because possum brains are so small they don't have room to imprint on people. So go ahead and make friends, you won't be disrupting its natural life!
I adore possums. Kentucky girl. Gentle, sweet-natured, nonaggressive critters. Good company.
Very interesting. I used to think that possums are gross (after all, their mouths are scary and they look weird, don't they?). I'm glad I learned how harmless they are and how good for pest control they are.
We have several possums... I put food out for them and really think they are wonderful!💕
I have a constant nighttime stream of the local possums on my back patio, where I set out cat kibble and water. I'm in Austin, Texas. I can sit at my computer desk and watch them from my window. It has been such fun to watch the younger possums grown up. Four have shared the food dish at the same time--I'm sure they're siblings. Large adults come too. I also get a mated pair of raccoons. They're HUGE, but are happy to share the food with the possums. A couple of times I watched a raccoon lie down to wait for a possum to finish eating. So endearing! I have never understood why many people find possums ugly. They're adorable.
What a nice person that aunt is. I'd like to know her, and and her possum friend. We have possums, raccoons, and skunks, (in the city). They're all friendly. It's a myth by the way that raccoons attack dogs, cats, or people. They absolutely do not. Some dogs will attack raccoons, and other small animals though. Please be kind to all animals. Personally, I sometimes prefer them to people.
I do not agree with Miniii in the article when she says possums are cute!! Look at those little faces with the pink dot nose
Unless you have a horse or are near horses, opossums are a primary carrier of a potentially deadly disease to horses. http://www.epmhorse.org/The_Disease/Opossum.htm
FIRST LET ME SAY... I AM A HORSE PERSON, but I am an open minded horse person, most are not..... the study blaming opossums was done back in the mid 1960's... 67 I think. IT'S OUTDATED AND SINCE THEN BEEN PROVED FALSE. Now to dispute the professor who did this study who is still alive seems not to be happening, however studies have been done by the University of Missouri that prove the "barn cat' is most likely to culprit as well as any other wildlife and birds.... not just the opossum. 2001 study... "Horses are considered EPM's aberrant hosts because only schizonts and merozoites (no sarcocysts) are found in horses. EPM-like disease occurs in a variety of mammals including cats, mink, raccoons, skunks, Pacific harbor seals, ponies, and Southern sea otters. Cats can act as an experimental intermediate host harboring the sarcocyst stage after ingesting sporocysts. This paper reviews information on the history, structure, life cycle, biology, pathogenesis, induction of disease in animal
Load More Replies... Opossums really are SUPER sweet!!! I have a family of 4 children that I'm really good friends with. They live in the forest, and the reason we are good friends is because when they were babys, they were freezing and starving and the night before my dogs apparently killed their mother. Because I'm who I am, I couldn't let them suffer so I kinda took em under my wing for a bit...
I assume most ignorant Americans think they are large rats. As such, they are targeted by people who WANT to run them over. I'm glad we have none in the area--we have just such a driver in my neighborhood. He went around the block twice to make sure he ran over a cat.
I had a pregnant opossum die in the crawl space under my house. Both my wife and I are disabled so we couldn't crawl under there and drag her bloated, smelly body out so I had to pay a guy $100 to go get it. He wretched quite a few times but got her out. I also paid his dump fee and a tank full of gas. After that, we shrunk the size of our cat doors, lol. No more possums, thankfully.
apparently we have opossums on Vancouver Island. I learned that today. They have been spotted in Victoria BC and over 600 were trapped on Hornby Island. Wow.
This makes me sad that my dogs played with 2 of them to death. The dogs didn't eat them, but they weren't just playing possum either. 2 possums and 3 birds, these dogs are serial killers.
Sadly they also carry Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis so they aren't welcome around horses. But they are cute!
That's an intelligent response to any wild animal.
Load More Replies... the way that they were saying "possum" instead of opossum was really bothering me lol
agree! They are completely different animals, I wonder where the confusion came from?
Load More Replies... Possum pee smells absolutely terrible. I hope Hank does his business outside.
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