What the....

Eight more wiggling baby possums arrived on Wednesday.  They came all the way from Pulaski county where a lady started smelling something under her house.  After 2-3 days she decided to investigate and she found that there was a dead possum with babies.  Here comes the GRAPHIC part.  She had to wash the maggots off of the babies.  It is amazing that there were any still alive, but this Good Samaritan took them to the vet where they called a rehabber who then contacted me.

This little one is very adventurous!

Sadly 2 have died within the past 12 hours though.  I actually removed 3 maggots from one of the baby's ear last night.  I'm hoping the remaining 6 will survive.  Such cute little fellas that just didn't have a very easy start.


Had to take some pictures of them eating.  Notice the milky little paw prints everywhere.  :-)

The turtle with the injured shell must be doing well internally, because she laid an egg!!!  Haven't checked for more yet, but had to share some pics.  The mark on the top was so that I would know which side was supposed to be up.  The tiny embryo attaches to the top of the egg shell and if it is turned it lessens the chances of the egg hatching.  I'm sorry...not the greatest pictures.  Maybe someday I will buy another camera!

      

Round 2

There are 2 possum "seasons" every year.  Most rehabbers get their first babies around April and the 2nd set in July.  I got my first babies for July Saturday and they are the smallest babies I've had so far.  There were 6 alive when I received them.  One passed away on the drive home and another shortly after getting home.  :-(  The remaining 4 have been hydrated and are on formula now.  They seem to be doing really well.  There are 3 boys and 1 little girl!  Thank you Brandy for saving these guys.  Without you, they surely would have died.

The colorful bedding was donated by Atoka Lawson.  Thank you Atoka!

Sleeping peacefully.  How sweet!

Their little eyes are still closed, but one little boy is starting to open his.

Can't help but love those little hands.

If you look closely, you can see that his eyes are peaking open just a little.  

Do you remember the tail biters that I got in a few weeks ago?  If you don't or if you missed that post, just look at my previous posts.  You can see that their tails were in pretty bad shape.  Now they are all healed up and 2 were large enough to be released.  We found a nice little creek in a secluded area to release them.  There are still 2 left from the group, but the others are still much smaller and not quite ready.  

Here are the little fellows before they were loaded into the carrier.

Tail looking much better.

Good luck!

Here are the others from the tail biting group and one that also came from Brandy!  They get to go into the big pen now!  Won't be long until they are ready to be released!

 Nope I didn't dress up for the pic!  Thanks Heath for getting this ever so flattering pic of me!

This was the one that had the very bad looking tail from the previous post.  All healed up now, but not much left.  We'll see how this guy does to be sure he will be able to go out into the REAL world.

That's all for now!  It won't be long before these guys are ready to be released.  There's still an "intermediate" group that will be moving to the pre-release cage when these leave.  I just love these guys!

Check out some of these cute toys from Amazon!  

        

First Release

This is what wildlife rehab is all about!  Releasing the animals back into the wild, but nobody ever said it would be easy.  I've had mixed emotions for a while.  We started off with tiny little baby possums and today we have juveniles that are ready to go into the BIG wild world.

Here was the beginning....

And here they are now...

This one kind of touched me.  It's little tail was hanging on to the side of the crate...

Come on...Let me out already!

First one out to explore.

Since it's been so dry I'm leaving some water close by until they can find a water source.

Already out in the bushes.  Right after this pic, she disappeared.  We could only hear her wandering around.

Good bye little ones!!!  :*)  Tears of joy!  Though it was sad to see them go, there was nothing cooler than watching them step out of the crate into freedom.  Freedom to explore, hunt, climb, procreate, etc.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me and everyone who has followed this journey of my first possum rehabs.  This is not the end of my rehab journey though.  I currently have 14 more possums and 1 box turtle.  This is merely the beginning.  Hang on tight because HERE WE GO!!!