(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

Jon and I were catapulted from bed last night by a hideous hissing-growling-grunting-snoring noise, which after a panicked search of the premises was discovered to be coming from somewhere on the roof near the front door. By the time I went out, armed only with a dressing gown and a torch, the perpetrator had vanished. A little Googling turned up this description:

Look, have you ever heard an Australian possum? They sound evil! They look cute, granted, but possums sound like pissed-off-cynical-resurrected-satanic-spirits.

... confirming my initial diagnosis.

Comments

[zeusgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Possums screech and hiss like nothing else. It sounds unworldly if you don't know what the sound is.

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

Nothing like being home alone at night... and hearing heavy breathing at your second-storey window... and whipping open the curtains to find yourself eyeball to eyeball with a possum hanging off the flywire...

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

I once mistook a possum's noises for a dangerous gas leak.

But, yes, fundamentally unsettling. So are koalas, for that matter. They sound for all the world like a pig eight times their size.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

Look up a book by Bill Scott called "Following the gold" (Penguin, 1999, ISBN 0140340068) which has the most amusing possum poem which starts (I think)

Possums are cheerful. Possums aren't glum.
They sit all night at the top of the gum,
Saying bad things. I'm glad in a way
I don't understand what possums say.

I've never had much trouble with them, even when I lived with some in my roof*. But I grew up in the bush, and knew what they were fairly early on.
It would have been a common brushtail. Ringtails aren't in the city much, and are very quiet.

* possibly because I was feeding them at the time.

[kitzen-kat.livejournal.com]

Great description of possum noises! We have one that could beat our 5.5 kg cat - enormous, a fluffy tail that goes on forever, and a repertoire of hisses and heavy breathing that is probably the envy of the local possum fraternity.

possums

[stephanielake.livejournal.com]

mum had possums in the roof - the sound is really freaky when your not used to it - homer simpsons is right - we need to triumph over a small furry animal!

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Raccoons sound like that too, when they're angry. Freakiest thing ever. After hearing the noises one of them made when we were trying to get it off our food pack at camp, I can never look at a raccoon the same way again. *shudders*

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

I hate possums. Ugly little things. And once, some students (dunno if they were mine or not) stuck a dead one on my porch. Blech!

(There was an albino possum that lived near Jasper Street in Dayton when my sister lived there. Mom and I were once driving there at night when the possum ran across the road. It was spooky! Like the Ghost of the Opossum!)

[whochick.livejournal.com]

It does sound like someone is being murdered oustide your window .. especially nice when you're camping or home alone :(

Possums

[masomika.livejournal.com]

A few years ago we had to remove an old gum tree from our front yard [it was that or it fell either a)across the road, b)across the driveway or c)into our hourse].

The possum that lived in it kept up a week long vigil outside my sister's bedroom window, making noises all night.

It's moved on, but sometimes it still pays us a visit; at night, just as I'm about to go to sleep it makes that horrible sound, keeping me awake...

Cameron

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

For all the racket. I still really like them. My family used to feed them in our backyard (at 2 and 1/2 acres it was a fairly large backyard), and the mother possum used to let us pat her babies in the pouch. It's a wonderful thing to be trusted like that by something wild.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

We were once away at an SF club camp staying in huts in the forest, and we were woken up by this hideous hideous noise. Karen woke me up because she thought (in her half awake state) that we were being attacked by aliens or something. Possums sound incredibly evil.