“Do Not Poke the Possum”: Woman Finds Marsupial Family in Her Closet

These two mothers didn't get off on the right foot, but their encounter ended with an uncommon interspecies understanding.

Tara McVicar was doing some spring cleaning in her Los Angeles home when she heard hissing coming from a plastic bag in her closet. It was an opossum, bearing its teeth at McVicar and hissing when she waved a broom at it.

"Holy crap," she said into a camera —  she filmed the May 6 encounter —  before trying to jab the animal again, eliciting another hiss.

"Do not poke the possum," she concluded.

But when Animal Control didn't come help her, McVicar decided to take matters into her own hands, especially when she realized the opossum, also called possums in America, was with a brood of babies.

A mother herself, McVicar managed to lure the opossum out of her closet by taking half the babies outside in a plastic bag, she said. The opossum wandered out of the house, the rest of her babies on her back.

"She's coming to judge my cluttered room," McVicar said as the mama walked onto her rug. "No judgment. You're a marsupial, you can put your clutter in your pouch."

Babies safely loaded up on her back, the opossum walked off. McVicar wished her well, and offered directions: "Just take 3rd all the way to Beverly Hills."

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