Remember the opossums?
10The ones that were raised by their mom in our garage for a couple of months?
Mom pretty much quit spending time with them, left them to their own devices for days at a time and even then, when she came back, she only paid any attention to a couple of them.
So, I said “let’s do this” and it took the better part of a weekend to catch them all (a box, heavy gloves and determination). We released them into the ferns on our bank. We had tried getting them to leave on their own, by putting food and water outside instead of the garage, but they’d go out and eat, then come back in.
And the outside food brought the trash pandas, I swear, I saw one of them carrying a knife when I confronted them at the food.
We kept the food outside, but those raccoons kept coming in and making a huge mess, and even though it was in a part of the yard we didn’t spend any time in, I was over it. All food was pulled up.
Once we were sure the joeys had all been relocated to outside, the doors were blocked with the exception of the cat door in the laundry room.
I saw one last night, climbing the fence. It wasn’t as big as I remembered, but it seemed healthy enough. Fortunately, they have plenty of avocados to eat right now. Both trees have decided they’ve had enough. Brian picked up over thirty off of the ground yesterday, I got another thirteen this morning. (Vet’s office is happy, that’s where we’re taking them.)
But there were a fair amount that have been munched on. We just left those because they will finish them.
It was bittersweet. I’ll have pleasant memories of them, but we’re not doing this again.
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Glad they are OK but I guess they think of your house as home now unfortunately. Those things can get really fat if you feed them enough. Where I used to live my next door neighbor would feed a couple of strays cats and a feral cat. A possum would wander over to eat, chase off the cats, and was the fattest wild animal I have ever seen.
@Kidsandliz We’re not feeding them. Ever. Again.
I’m jealous now that your opossums get to eat avocados and I don’t have any. I like them enough that I planted a tree and it’s 3 years old now and huge. Still no avocados – not a single one. It’s even taller than my gazebo. How big do these need to get before I get any avocados?
@cengland0 Was that planted from a seed? I know it takes longer to bare fruit from a seed. My mom had a tree from a seed and it was ten years, I think, before it had fruit and that surprised the hell out of her. She lived in a mobile home and one day it was windy and she kept hearing a banging at the side of the coach. It was avocados.
We got ours at CostCo as little trees back in 2012 ($15 each). They had blossoms on them when we got them. The blossoms all fell off, though. Probably because they needed to get established first.
It wasn’t long after that they actually started giving fruit.
This picture was taken in 2013.
In 2018, one tree was loaded with buds, the other, not so much. Last year, both trees had tons of blossoms and those are the avocados that are ripe right now. Next year, there will be nothing, no fruit. For some reason, there were zero blossoms on either tree. Looking at the bright side, this will be a good time to prune them so they start to look like real trees and not bushes.
@lisaviolet You know when you open an avocado to eat it, there’s a round nut in the middle. Instead of throwing that away, we put it in a glass of water until it sprouted roots and then we put it in the ground. Is that the seed? If so, then that’s what I started with. Didn’t buy the plant already grown.
@cengland0 Yes, that’s the seed. It takes years to provide fruit, if it ever does.
Do some research on the web. Maybe there’s a way to force it to produce. I’d always heard it wouldn’t unless it was grafted or something along those lines, then there was my mom’s tree. So, dunno the answer.
@cengland0 @lisaviolet
I don’t know anything about avocados and they would die here… But a lot of trees are like that. The ones that actually behave the way you want and produce what you want are grafted at a nursery. Basically clones of a tree every knows is good. Planting a random seed you kinda don’t know what it’s going to do. Apples are a good example. Just plant one out of a store bought apple who knows but it’s not going to be that apple probably.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_tree_propagation
@cengland0 @lisaviolet @unksol Our current goat might know… @weboh?
@lisaviolet @unksol Thanks for the info. Might be a bad year for fruit anyway.
I could attribute all this to global warming and my trees being confused by the warm weather but then again it could be due to a decrease in local bees. Who knows?!?!?! My herbs are thriving which doesn’t require pollination.
@cengland0 @unksol We had a ton of bees this year, during the spring and summer, we have clover patches in the lawn. Brian mows around them.
And then there’s the catnip patch, it’s also loaded with bees.
But the trees never blossomed this past spring. There was nothing to pollinate.
Our avocado trees. The plan is to prune them back so they look more like trees than bushes.
Possums aren’t going hungry. There were a few more of these under the tree and one on the pool pump deck. Not sure if it was here in hopes it could be carried over the fence. The barrier at the top (the one that keeps our cats in our yard) would make that difficult.
@cengland0 @Kyeh @lisaviolet @unksol Yep, avocado trees planted from a seed can take 8-20 years to produce fruit. No way to tell if it will be 8 or 20 because it’s dependent on the type of avocado, and you won’t know what type it is until it fruits.
You can always graft a branch from a neighbor’s tree or buy one to graft onto yours. Then the graft will be mature enough to give fruit right away.
I love how I was tagged here. I’d like to be like Barney or Carl699 where I get tagged whenever tropical fruit trees come up.
Possums will keep coming back if there used to eating in one spot and they can be really nasty too. You might want to try and keep them out if your yard or keep the excess food to a minimum.
My dad used to feed the birds bread and then we noticed massive raccoons and possums the size of large dogs coming around at night. So we made him stop.
@Star2236 In front of our water heater in the garage, in the middle of the day, during one of last month’s incredibly humid, hot days.
Sleeping joey.
When they came out at night, I would offer a cut up grape to one of the babies and it would take it from my hand. I’d let it sniff my hand, which I quickly withdrew because it was obvious it was an “oh! food!” moment.
I’m glad they’re gone.