The many tried and tested methods I used to get rid of possums in my backyard

Possums have the cutest, sweetest little marsupial faces you’ve ever seen, and you’re definitely not allowed to smack those sweet little marsupial faces with the back of a shovel – according to the Wildlife Act 1975.  So I had to try something less animal-deadly to stop possums from eating my entire backyard.

First, I tried making a batch of possum repellent. I poured tabasco sauce and fish sauce into a spray bottle and sprayed all my trees and plants.

But the possums kept eating everything, they loved the taste. These are Melbourne possums with sophisticated palettes, open to Tex-Mex/Vietnamese fusion-cuisines.

(And a warning to all possum-repellent sprayers: don’t spray on a windy day. I got tabasco/fish-sauce blow-back and had to flush out my eyes with water, then deodorise with Glade Classic Rose Air-Freshener).

Tried putting a plastic owl statue in the garden to scare the possums away, but that didn’t work either. For some reason they weren’t afraid of an owl that tipped over in a light breeze and had a Bunnings price-sticker on its wing.

(A warning to plastic owl-buyers: the statues have a small hole in the bottom so they can be stuck on a post, but my possums found an inventive new use for the hole. No need to go into details).

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Tried putting up possum-guards to stop the possums from climbing my fruit trees. These are thick plastic bands that you wind around the tree so it looks like it’s been gift-wrapped at a Japanese homewares store. But the possums just jumped over from the neighbour’s tree, then enjoyed an all-you-can-eat fruit buffet.

(A warning to tree-banders: don’t nail in the possum-guards with long nails. I managed to kill my fruit trees a lot faster than any possum could).

Tried placing a possum-roller on the telephone line to block the major transport-route into the CBD (Central Backyard of Danny).

The roller is a long PVC tube that spins when a possum steps on it, but my possums just sprinted over the roller like Australian Ninja Warrior finalists on the spinning log obstacle. And just before they did, they sat on the phone-line for a minute or two, directly over my driveway, and used the roof of my car as a squat toilet.

(A warning to phone-line blockers: if your car has a sunroof, close it at night).

Tried everything. Spiky fence-strips. Extreme branch-pruning. I even tried to buy “fox-urine granules” because that’s also supposed to deter possums, but you can only get it in America (somewhere in Connecticut there must be a factory with thousands of foxes in tiny toilet cubicles, urinating from 9 to 5).

So that’s it. I quit. The house belongs to the possums now – I’ve got a conveyancer finalising the title transfer. I tell you, it gets pretty noisy living in a possum-owned house. Armed militants could be abseiling onto my roof from choppers and I’d just roll over in bed, half-asleep, mumbling “… bloody possums.”