The Drunk Opossum

09/14/2026

09/14/2026

Erika has another PSA. Sorry - Im full of them tonight.

THE BIRDS ARE COMING - cue the B-rated Indie film. Well… technically, they’re migrating. Same difference, amiright?!

August 1st thru Nov 15th is migration season with the bulk occurring during September and October. Right now is PEAK! Millions of birds are currently hauling ass across the country for fall migration and a huge portion of that travel happens at night.

Unfortunately, our lights can confuse and disorient them, pulling them off course and increasing their chances of smacking into things they definitely did not intend to smack into - like the stupid pinky toe I think I broke today. So, for the love of tiny exhausted little travelers: TURN OFF THE DAMN LIGHTS.

Porch light you’re not using? Off.
Backyard lit up like a prison yard? (Safe, I like it) Off.
Inside lights blazing through uncovered windows? Close the blinds and thats also to prevent the creepy neighbor from watching you. Double win in my book!

And this website is REALLY freaking cool. You can see a map showing where migration is forecast to be heaviest across the U.S. and even look up what’s happening in your own area. Go look. Seriously. It’s fascinating.

Mission We use weather radar to detect and predict the numbers and flight directions of migrating birds aloft to support bird conservation and expand our understanding of migratory bird movement. Migration Tools Active from March 1 - June 15 and August 1 - November 15 Live Mig

09/14/2026

Meet Petunia ❤️

She is an old, tired lady like Edward, but her story is a little different. Petunia has been living in a family’s backyard in Humble.

Side note: Folks like them renew your faith in humanity.

Petunia has no fear of people or dogs, and either one could kill her. Fearing for her safety and survival, the family tried to encourage her to move along, but nothing worked. Night after night, she walked the perimeter of their yard in search of food, life’s deepest questions, or literally anything except an escape route. She clearly liked living at the Nash House. The problem was her repeated interaction with dogs and her declining health.

After a family discussion, they made the hard decision: they love her, but she can’t stay there. Petunia was humanely trapped overnight, and they texted me this morning and basically said, We love her so much that we need her to go. So they loaded up and drove over an hour to get her somewhere safe.

I met her this morning and was anticipating a bite, but she was surprisingly approachable and doesn’t seem bothered around people. THIS is a problem. Normally, we don’t support “trap and relocate,” but this old lady clearly isn’t doing well. She is very dehydrated, covered in cuts, bumps and bruises, with significant hair loss and loss of body mass.

Ideally, we’ll get her back to her fighting weight and find a suitable place for release. Realistically, though, Petunia may have already fought the good fight. She may simply be tired. She may not have long with us. I don’t know. She will either heal and be released, or quite literally die trying.

Either way, she has 100% of our support with healthy food, medicine, veterinary care, and a team that will ultimately give her exactly what she needs: Release or dignity.

09/13/2026

We will be introducing Petunia later this evening 🥰

09/13/2026

This old man was hit by a car on Bay Area Blvd. It looked like he was trying to eat some fast food trash thrown out of a car window. This is where I throw in a PSA: When you litter, you just suck as a person. When you throw biodegradable food out the window, it attracts hungry wildlife and they get hit by cars.

My hubs has named him Edward and he’s super old (the opossum, not my husband). I’m not sure what his prognosis is or the extent of his injuries because with the day he’s had, Edward needs a few hours to decompress and rest before I start poking and prodding. Stress kills - literally - and it delays healing, compromises immunity, inhibits growth, interferes with your guts (Edward has been very gassy), and could cause animal to go into shock.

So when I left him alone for a little bit and returned to this … I knew he needed the sleep. He’s exhausted, but better yet … I know he feels safe because it’s stomach is exposed and he’s relaxed. His fists have also opened.

If you love them, let them sleep.

09/11/2026

Thanks Fort Bend Wildlife Rescue. This is great article!!

Opossums on a Georgia barrier island that has had reduced predation for roughly 4,000 years evolved to age slower than opossums on the mainland five miles away. They live 25 to 50 percent longer. They produce smaller litters. They stay reproductively healthy into their second year when mainland females are already declining. Even the collagen in their tail tendons breaks down more slowly. Same species. Same ancestor population. Four thousand years of not being eaten as often and their bodies decided there was no rush.

Steven Austad, then a biologist at Harvard, first became interested in opossums in Venezuela during the 1980s while studying their reproductive behavior. He was shocked by how fast they aged. A Venezuelan opossum was old at two. It was dead by three. The speed of the decline was extreme even by mammalian standards. An animal roughly the size of a house cat was aging faster than any similarly sized mammal he knew of.

The question was whether the aging rate was fixed in the species or whether it could be changed by changing the environment. Sapelo Island off the Georgia coast gave him the experiment. The island had been separated from the mainland for at least 4,000 years. The opossum population on it had experienced roughly four millennia with dramatically fewer predators than the mainland population across the water. If evolutionary senescence theory was right, the island opossums should age slower because natural selection on the island had less reason to favor fast reproduction and more reason to favor body maintenance.

Austad radio-collared opossums on the island and on the mainland and compared them across three measures of aging. The first was survival. Island females survived better at every age than mainland females. The mortality curve was flatter. They died slower.

The second was reproduction. Island females produced litters roughly 20 percent smaller than mainland females at all ages. Smaller litters mean each offspring receives more maternal investment, which increases the chance of surviving to reproduce itself. On the mainland, where a predator could end a female's reproductive career at any moment, producing the maximum number of offspring as fast as possible is the winning strategy. On the island, where predators were fewer and the chance of surviving to a second or third breeding season was higher, the winning strategy shifted toward fewer offspring and more investment per offspring.

The third measure was the strangest. Austad pulled collagen fibers from the tail tendons of island and mainland opossums and measured how quickly the protein denatured under controlled conditions. Collagen cross-linking is a generalized marker of physiological aging across mammals. Old collagen is stiffer and more resistant to denaturation than young collagen. Island opossums' tail tendons aged more slowly than mainland opossums' tail tendons. The difference was not behavioral. It was not dietary. It was structural. The connective tissue inside the island opossums was younger at the same chronological age than the connective tissue inside the mainland opossums. Their bodies were physically aging at a slower rate.

The mainland opossums that did survive to a second breeding year showed a measurable decline in pouch-young growth rates compared to their first year. Their milk production or quality had dropped. Their bodies were already failing reproductively at two years old. The island second-year mothers showed no such decline. They were raising offspring as effectively at two as they had at one because their bodies had not yet begun the deterioration that the mainland opossums had already entered.

Image is for illustration purposes only

Source: Austad (1993), Journal of Zoology / Psychology Today / University of Alabama at Birmingham / Deseret News / Why Evolution Is True.

09/09/2026

09/07/2026

Adios to Sissy and the Henderson family!

09/06/2026

Meet Squirrely Dan, a newly hatched BOI. He was found last night covered in ants. His rescuers took excellent care of him overnight and woke up every 2 hours to make sure he was warm! ❤️

Look closely at this baby and his beautiful toes! You can always tell if you have a squirrel because the toe nails are black. Mice and rats are clear. Opossums have an opposable thumb and no nails on their back thumbs.

Happy Sunday!

09/05/2026

Hey y’all, we need old towels for our larger cages, even one or two would be greatly appreciated.

You can use “in the name of charity” as an excuse to buy all new bath towels. 😉