MUS. COMP. ZOOL 
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Published monthly by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Connecticut. 
Subscription. $1.50 a year Single copy, 15 cents 
Entered as Second-Class Matter June 12, 1909, at Sound Beach Post Office, under Act of March 3, 1897. 
Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917. 
authorized on June 27, 1918. 
Volume XIII. FEBRUARY, 1921 Number 9 
The Peeping Opossum. 
By Dr. J. B. Pardoe, Bound Brook, New Jersey. 
When a barefoot boy with cheeks of 
tan, I lived in the country on a farm 
surrounded by woods and streams. At 
the age of ten I had a camera and a 
Gordon setter. I roamed the woods in 
search of pictures and natural history 
specimens in general. One day my 
dog, Duke, gave me to understand, in 
his dog language, that something I 
wanted was in a stone fence. Looking 
in a hole under the fence I saw the 
tail of an opossum. 
Now the catching of furs was one 
source of income for me. Money looked 
big in those days. Opossums brought 
twelve, fifteen and twenty cents; 
skunks, fifty and ninety cents ; musk- 
rats, eight and twelve cents ; minks, a 
dollar and a half ; red fox, two dollars. 
Opossums were not thought to be of 
much account. Now they bring many 
dollars. 
Lying down and thrusting my hand 
and arm in the hole to get Mr. Opossum 
hv the tail, I was surprised to receive 
a good big bite on my hand. I hastily 
withdrew it with the opossum holding 
on to it long enough so I could release 
him with my other hand at the mouth 
of the hole. I never caught another 
opossum in that fashion, and I still 
Copyright 1921 by The Agassiz Associ; 
have the scar on my hand where that 
opossum held fast to it. 
There was quite a collection of wild 
animals living in my territory — skunks, 
raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, opossums, 
etc. I kept a pair of opossums in the 
cellar of my home. One night when all 
was still I was surprised to hear grunts 
coming from the cellar. I had not 
known that opossums grunted like pigs. 
These opossums lived in the cellar 
nearly all winter. I am sure they 
scared the rats away, as no more rat 
signs were noticed. I fed them chicken 
heads, apples, sweet corn, etc. 
An old fiddle-playing darky named 
Mose, with many dogs, was always 
glad to get any opossums that I would 
let him have. One day I said, “Mose, 
you don’t really like to eat ’possums, do 
you?” “’Deed I do, Hunter Boy,” he 
said. “Them’s mighty sweet. I hang 
them up and let them freeze. That 
makes them tender.” 
The opossum is spoken of as a dull- 
witted. slow moving creature, but at 
times it is surprisingly agile and quick. 
A species of opossums no larger than 
our chipmunks lives in South America. 
A specimen reached this country riding 
in a large bunch of bananas. 
ion, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Conn. 
