That looked like a BIG possum!

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“There’s a big old . . . there’s a big old boar possum come in here. I . . . I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what it was. And it come in here and in four days, I believe, three or four days, he killed . . . in my chickenhouse out there he killed sixteen big hens. He come out there and he’d knock ’em off of the roost and all the . . . all he got was the head.

“And I couldn’t figure what it was, you know. I thought it was a . . . I thought it must be a weasel or . . . so one night I backed my truck down there . . . I backed my truck out there and backed down there where I could see and I . . . I was sitting out there in the back of the truck a laying for him.

“And he come around the barn, come in there. He went in there, buddy, and he knocked two of them chickens off of that roost. He come around that barn so fast I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t tell . . . I looked . . . I said, “That looked like a big possum.” Well, this dog was there and by time I come around he got gone, and that made sixteen of them big hens, buddy, in four days. He’d come in there and knock ’em off the roost. I’d go out there and they’d just be laying there.

“So I fastened everything up, and where you first come in the barn, you know, there . . . he . . . he had the hole in the lower side down where he come in the chickenhouse. I went out there and I set me a big trap, a big double-jaw trap down there, and sure enough I walked out there the next morning, there he was. Buddy, that . . . I mean that was a big long-legged possum. I never . . . I didn’t know a possum would . . . would catch a chicken. And I had a big old ball peen hammer and I walked around there. Possums are hard to kill. And [chuckle] I said, ‘Son, I’m going to give you a lick for every chicken that you killed from me.’ “

Clarence R. Wells
Family Farm Oral History Project
University of Kentucky

More articles on possums:

Why The Possum’s Tail Is Bare(Opens in a new browser tab)

Rabbit and the ‘Possum after a Wife(Opens in a new browser tab)