Slaying Possum : Group Is Upset About County’s Program to Kill the Animals

In the animal kingdom, there are few creatures more maligned than opossums.

They have naked, rat-like faces and long, naked tails at the ends of fat bodies covered with short, bristly hair.

People seem to have a little trouble pronouncing their name and usually end up calling them possums.

But those are no reasons for killing them, says veterinary doctor Anita Henness of Orange, who also is founder of the Southern California Opossum Club.

“These animals may not be as pretty as mountain lions, for example, but they’re a lot more useful,” she said. “They eat all sorts of insects and rodents and garden snails and other pests, as well as carrion. They deserve respect.”

But, she said, Orange County Animal Control officials have been killing every one they’ve gotten their hands on since 1985.

And that is true. More than 3,600 opossums were killed last year alone, animal control administrator Len Liberio said. Before 1985, captured animals were returned to various open spaces in wilder parts of the county.

But there was good reason, in the minds of public health authorities, to stop freeing them and putting them to sleep instead. Opossums, they say, sometimes carry fleas whose bites can cause Murine typhus in humans. It’s a potentially deadly disease, but figures from the California Department of Health Services show that there have been no fatalities in the state since before 1976, and only 20 during the half-century before that.

“In late 1984, an Orange County man came down with Murine typhus,” said Dr. Thomas J. Prendergast, the county epidemiologist. “A possum was trapped in the area (northeast of El Toro) and tested positive as a source of the disease. It was a good diagnosis, and it’s a treatable disease, sort of like the flu, so the man recovered nicely.”

Different Approach

But as a result, some months later and in agreement with the county Vector Control District, animal control officers decided the safest approach, since human life was at stake, was to kill all opossums that were brought in.

Both Liberio and Dr. Prendergast said that the county people “didn’t go out looking for possums” and that the only ones they got were those that had been reported as nuisances by residents.

Even so, the killings disturbed Henness, who said that all but about a dozen of the animals were put to death without being tested to see if they were carriers.

The issue became emotional and complex and still was in an uncertain state after a meeting several days ago between Henness’ club, which was formed last December and has about 30 members, and county health and animal shelter personnel.

In the end, it was decided that county veterinarian Nila Kelly would, for the next 90 days, test every opossum brought into the shelter.

Testing, Kelly said, also would involve killing the animal because the blood must be taken from the heart.

And no one knows yet what will happen when the 90 days are up.

“Whatever we decide to do will depend on the percentage of those that test positive,” Kelly said.

Dr. Prendergast added that “if we found a significant number of positives in a specific neighborhood, then I guess we’d euthanize every animal that came from that place. But nobody knows yet exactly what we’ll do.”

Liberio said if it is decided to release some of the animals, they will again be driven to backcountry areas, “at very little extra cost or inconvenience to our operation.”

Henness, who pointed out that opossums, which have pouches like kangaroos, are the only marsupials native to North America, said she was not really satisfied with the outcome of the meeting.

“We don’t know what the opossum population is out there, but we do know we just keep losing them,” she said.