June 4

Last day of the week and it was the most successful mammal trapping we’ve had yet! Dry Bay was our first site and we found 3 mice had run into the Sherman traps last night. There were two girls and 1 boy and all were deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus). Like all the other mice we have caught so far, they had no ticks that we could tell. These mice were so cute until they started to squirm the first two were biters and we discovered that they really like to bite the rubber part of a mechanical pencil. It was a great distraction for them and they stayed relatively still. The third mouse was more of a squirmer then a biter, plus her fur was wet so she was quite slippery. But I did learn how to give them an ear tag. It’s simple enough you just need a steady hand, a pair of pliers and the ear tag. I gave the last two mice their ear tags.
With high hopes for more mammals we headed over to Long Tin. All of the Sherman traps were empty and we were about to check the last pitfall and last medium mammal trap of the array when our luck hit again. In the pitfall trap we found a house mouse (Mus musculus). This girl took us a while time to key out because this species is usually found in buildings but sure enough her home is in the woods. Like the other mice she had no ticks. Then we realized we caught a big one. In the Tomahawk trap was a male opossum (Didelphis virginiana). He was just laying in the back of the cage very calm, he barely even showed his teeth when approached him. The protocol for handling medium size mammals requires us to use a sedative by injection. He barely even flinched when the needle pierced his skin. Within ten minutes he had dozed off. Since I’ve never handled anything larger than a mouse Russ and Kaety processed him but I paid careful attention because after the next trip I will be handling everything with Kaety because Russ will no longer be coming down. The opossum had 6 engorged Lone-star ticks on the back of his ears. He was having a rough week, besides being caught in a cage he had recently been in a fight. He had cuts on his head and back and the padding on his front paw had a hole that looked like it was infected. The poor boy was then released and by released I mean he was carried into the woods and laid on a comfy bed of leaves to wake up on. All in all a great way to end the week, until next time folks.
The first picture is of the opossum in the cage playing dead.
The second picture is of the opossum's front foot were he has a big cut.