An apple a day…
Hannah noticed the difference in blunt bite marks in her apples from possums (left) compared to hollowed out pecks from birds (right).
City Sanctuary resident, Hannah, was excited to move to a property with a lovely apple tree and vege garden but she quickly discovered she wasn’t the only one excited about the produce in her garden! Hannah discovered that a possum had taken a liking to what was on offer. We asked Hannah how she caught her thief.
So, you suspected you had a possum visiting your garden. What made you think it was a possum? Did you ever hear or see it?
We think so, yes. We only moved into this place at the end of last year, and started to notice bite marks in the apples as they were ripening on the tree or on ones that had fallen in the wind. We also planted some winter greens a couple of months ago and noticed bite marks in the young leaves that seemed unusual to us, clearly not caterpillars or birds.
How did you get connected with City Sanctuary?
I saw a post from DOC on Instagram (07 June 2024) that was celebrating volunteer programs and they had tagged Predator Free Dunedin. After scrolling through the posts on Predator Free Dunedin's page I saw one that talked about lodging a report of any possum sightings. I went to the website and filled in the easy form noting down what I had seen. Soon after, City Sanctuary emailed me to say thanks for lodging a report, and asked if I wanted to host a trap on my property. I then had a call from Kai from City Sanctuary to arrange installing the trap. Kai was really friendly and had loads of knowledge, he showed me how to reset the trap and left a load of bait for future resets, warning that it might take a while for possums to be interested in something new in their environment.
Can you tell us how you finally caught the possum? Did you catch it soon after you got set up with a trap?
Kai installed the trap at lunchtime on a Friday, using Treacle Gold as bait, thinking it was different enough from the apples on the tree to be interesting to the possums. When we got up on Saturday morning, we saw the possum in the trap!
We haven't caught any more since then, but have heard it can take a while for any other possums to enter another's territory... although we have seen some bite marks in apples this week so maybe another one is moving into the area!
Are there any other interesting observations or information that you’d like to share about your experience?
We have noticed more birds in the tree since the possum was caught, normal garden birds as well as natives, which has been great to see.
The whole process from lodging the form to getting the trap installed was really easy, everyone I spoke to was really helpful and keen to have any support to reduce the number of predators in the area.
The app that is used to record any catches is also easy to use!
We are stoked that you connected with City Sanctuary and caught your possum, Hannah! Here’s to a bountiful garden harvest soon!