Opossums

[Webster says: Any of a family of American marsupials, chiefly nocturnal, largely arboreal, and almost omnivorous. Usually has a pointed snout, prehensile tail, and grayish to blackish fur with white on the cheeks. When caught it feigns death.]

• Newborn opossums run 153 to the ounce.
• Question: How do you wake up a possum playing possum? Answer: Throw it into water.
• Opossums rarely hang by their tails, despite the cartoons (and the illustration on this page!).
• Consider the opossum. If wounded while playing dead, it bleeds very little, if at all.
• Poisonous snakes that live where opossums live — rattlesnakes, copperheads — can't kill opossums. Poisonous snakes that don't live where opossums live — cobras — CAN kill opossums.
• What's the difference between an opossum and a possum? Possum is an abbreviation for opossum. I know it's only one letter short...but that's all it takes to be an abbreviation.