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 Food Preferences [Note: Throughout this site possums appear to be eating all kinds of junk food, but our photos give a misleading impression as to how often particular foods are introduced. Also, over time, we have focused more on offering fruit and vegetables, and cutting back on treats. For the most part, the possums will eat a combination of a few different pieces of fruit and vegetables each night they visit, egs: apple, pear, mandarin orange, mango, grapes, capsicum, carrot, tomato. Our possums do not visit every night, and some only visit once in a while.] If Ginger likes a food, it will be eaten when offered. Otherwise, it will not be accepted in the first place, or it will be dropped after it is tasted. Sometimes a preferred food will be eaten first and a rejected one will be acceptable later. We have tried feeding her a wide variety of foods over time, although we try to feed her as many fruits and vegetables as possible in proportion to the rest. Ginger likes to try new things. When a new food is introduced, she becomes animated, recognizing that it is a new food, and then as she checks it out she decides if she likes it or not. If she doesn't, it gets dropped. GK and I have learned to read her body language, and can tell when something is about to be dropped. [Often if a possum finds something particularly yummy, the eyes will open wide, and the little possum mouth will move up and down with astounding rapidity, as if to make sure the delicious item is all eaten before it can be taken away.] Ginger's favourite foods seem to be gingerbread, pasta (with chunky, garlicky tomato sauce), bananas, grapes, peaches, capsicum (red bell pepper), apples. She likes highly flavoured foods like Indian food, Greek food, Italian food. She also likes stirfries and Chinese food. She doesn't seem to recognize the meat part of any of these as food, though. When eating a fortune cookie, she will either eat around the paper, or pull it out one end if she can. (Her first fortune: 'You will be awarded a great honour.') [Warning: We have heard that possums and other marsupials are lactose intolerant, and while we mention feeding possums foods that contain cow's milk, we have heard that it is not a good idea to do so. It may be ok to let them have very small portions, but we do not know for certain.] She likes junk food: pizza crust, Doritos, biscuits/cookies, chocolate cake, ice cream, even reduced-fat ice cream. She will eat raw vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, but prefers stirfried vegetables to raw. She does not recognize green beans as food, stirfried or not. She doesn't like zucchini or lettuce. Carrots and kiwifruit have been nibbled but dropped out of boredom before long. Sometimes freshness is an issue, or if she can smell that something more interesting might be around she will ignore what is offered and sniff the air or our hands. She likes oranges, pears and tomatoes (she especially likes tomatoes when very fresh, but will also eat sundried tomatoes). She likes cheese and dairy products like cream and sour cream. She seemed to like cashews more than peanuts. She obviously seemed to like birdseed. Plain air-popped popcorn is something else she likes very much. We are not sure why, but when Ginger is fed a piece of banana, she often runs off somewhere to eat it. It could be that it is denser and takes longer to eat than some other things, and she likes to find a comfortable spot in which to eat it at leisure. It could be that when the piece is large she likes to go off somewhere to eat it. Sometimes other large-ish pieces of food have the same effect. 
Cooking smells will sometimes attract Ginger to the house. The smell of cooking/roasting garlic seems to attract her. One night when I was making a very garlicky pasta sauce, I found Ginger clinging to the screen door, seemingly trying to get into the house. Another night when I was baking chocolate brownies, Ginger didn't want any of the fruits or vegetables offered to her - she seemed to be saying that all she wanted was what she could smell cooking. However, most nights Ginger is quite content to eat fruit. [When she came into the house the first few times she spent a while looking around. After those first few exploratory missions, she usually headed directly for the kitchen upon entering the house, but if there were any changes to the surroundings since her previous visit she would sniff them first. She would seem to check out anything that reminded her of a tree - including table legs and vertical support beams. She has never urinated or defecated in the house. She would often run outside to eat the food she was given, except if it was something like grapes. Ginger likes for grapes to be placed directly into her mouth, but the very first time she was offered a cluster she plucked one grape from the bunch with her hands.] She has eaten little pieces of raw ginger. GK read that when trying to capture possums, a paste which includes ginger, flour and sugar has been used to attract them. Updates: Ginger and Blackbeard are very fond of pineapple, but Cocoa doesn't like it, except (cooked) in sweet and sour sauce. They will all eat medium hot food, but Cocoa will actually lick the hot part (eg. curry or satay sauce) off naan or toast or whatever, drop the bread and want more curry/sauce, while the other two will eat the combo of bread and curry or sauce. Cocoa does like bread, but apparently finds hot sauces so tasty that bread is boring in comparison. Cocoa is the only meat-eating possum. The other two will sniff meat, and then back away noticeably. (She will also eat fish.) The possums will eat small amounts of watermelon and kiwifruit if they are in the mood for it. All of the possums like apples, bananas, grapes, mangoes, gingerbread, and pasta with a garlicky tomato sauce, but there is a surprising amount of variation in preferences related to other foods. Ginger and Cocoa have recently (27/10/05) surprised us by eating stirfried green beans and bits of lettuce - which had always been refused or dropped in the past. 20/01/06: Cocoa is currently mad for cherries and carrots. Blackbeard likes peaches but doesn't like fresh apricots as much, while with Cocoa it seems to be the other way around. 14/09/06: Kulfi likes hot-spicy foods and meat. He also likes GK's baklava. He will eat most fruits offered to him, as well as carrots. All possums, including Kulfi and Olaf, like gingerbread and chocolate. Blackbeard is particularly fond of birdseed and muesli. He wouldn't eat GK's baklava, and he still has no interest whatsoever in meat - even refusing pizza crust on which he can smell traces of meat. Queek is still a baby at present, but definitely seems to like carrots and apples. He has wrestled chocolate away from Cocoa, as well as healthier foods. 20/09/06: Olaf likes meat. He was attracted to the house when we were cooking chicken parmigiana, and I fed him two pieces of it which he seemed to like very much. He also performed a Cocoa trick: we have noticed that possums don't especially care for rice crackers, much preferring Doritos, but Cocoa especially will lick the hot flavouring off a rice cracker and then drop it. Olaf recently did the same with a bbq rice cracker. He likes bananas. I have found when handfeeding him small pieces of food that his mouth is bigger than that of most possums, and when he closes his mouth around food his tooth ends up against my finger (he doesn't bite me, though). For some reason, possums do not seem to be impressed by strawberries. 09/10/06: Queek likes Indian food. He will eat medium hot food, including curried prawns and chicken. Olaf didn't mind some of the food, but backed away in horror from a prawn. Kulfi becomes quite animated when eating Indian food, and looks like he could happily eat it almost indefinitely. Olaf doesn't like pears, whereas most of the other possums prefer pears to apples. Blackbeard doesn't seem to like baklava, Haigh's chocolate pecan fudge, cashews, honey roasted macadamias... hmmm, there appears to be a pattern. Blackbeard may not like nuts. For some reason, he will eat chocolate with hazelnuts in it, though. He seems to love chocolate cake, but will not eat white cake with white icing. 06/11/07: Kwila is the first possum here to like strawberries. She will not just eat a small bit and drop the rest like the others, but actually seems to enjoy them very much. She will eat all the foods that other possums eat, and also more unusual items like pawpaw (papaya). The grown up Queek seems to be a bit like Blackbeard when it comes to fussiness. He will accept some items reluctantly, almost as if he is trying to communicate that he knows more appealing items are available, and would prefer to wait for them. Both Queek and Kwila like toasted pumpkin seeds, and both gobbled down small bits of cornbread dipped in pumpkin soup. Ginger main page |