If you’ve spotted a possum in your backyard, the best thing to do in most cases is nothing. Virginia opossums are shy, non-aggressive creatures that are almost certainly passing through. They’re nocturnal wanderers with large home ranges, and one showing up near your porch or garden doesn’t mean it’s moved in. That said, there are a few smart steps to take depending on the situation, especially if you have pets or see babies nearby.
Why You Probably Don’t Need to Worry
Opossums look intimidating. They have 50 teeth (more than any other North American land mammal), beady eyes, and a hissing display that can startle anyone taking out the trash at night. But they’re not aggressive unless cornered. That hissing, growling, and teeth-baring is a bluff. If the bluff doesn’t work, their next move is the famous “playing possum,” a involuntary response where they collapse into a death-like state, sometimes for hours, complete with a foul smell meant to convince predators they’re already dead.
Opossums rarely carry rabies. As marsupials, their body temperature runs lower than most mammals, which makes their bodies a poor environment for the rabies virus. They’re not completely immune, but the risk is far lower than with raccoons, skunks, or bats.
Keep Pets Inside After Dark
The most practical concern with a backyard opossum isn’t danger to you. It’s your pets. Confrontations between pets and opossums are relatively common, and according to the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management program, pets are often the ones that get injured. An opossum backed into a corner will defend itself, and those 50 teeth can do real damage to a curious dog or cat.
The simplest fix: bring dogs and cats inside at night, or supervise them during evening bathroom trips. If your pets stay outdoors overnight, removing pet food before dark is the single most effective step you can take. Outdoor pet food is one of the top attractants drawing opossums into yards in the first place.
What Opossums Do for Your Yard
You may have heard that opossums eat thousands of ticks. That claim comes from a single lab study estimating each opossum consumes over 5,000 tick larvae per year. However, a more recent study examined the stomach contents of 32 wild opossums and didn’t find a single tick. The researchers also reviewed nearly two dozen other diet studies and found that none of them reported ticks either. So the tick-eating reputation is likely overstated.
That doesn’t mean opossums aren’t helpful. They eat slugs, snails, beetles, small rodents, and carrion. They clean up fallen fruit and rotting food. They’re native animals that fill a genuine ecological role, even if it’s not the tick vacuum you may have read about. A possum passing through your yard is doing light pest control and sanitation work for free.
How to Discourage Them Humanely
If an opossum is a one-time visitor, let it move on. They rarely stay in one spot for long. But if you’re seeing opossums regularly or one has set up camp under your deck, there are effective ways to make your yard less appealing without harming the animal.
- Remove food sources. Bring pet food inside by nightfall. Pick up fallen fruit from trees. Keep garbage cans tightly covered. If opossums are foraging under your bird feeder, stop filling it for a few weeks. Cover compost scraps with a thick layer of grass clippings or leaves.
- Light up your yard. Opossums are nocturnal and prefer darkness. Keeping your yard well-lit at night is one of the most effective deterrents. Leave lights on consistently for several weeks so passing opossums learn to avoid the area. Flashing lights, like strings of Christmas lights, work especially well.
- Clear hiding spots. Trim overgrown shrubbery and brush piles near your house. Opossums want cover during the day, so making your yard feel exposed reduces its appeal.
- Block entry routes. If you notice a consistent path opossums use to enter your yard, temporary barriers like small fences or piled branches can redirect them.
- Use scent deterrents. Rags soaked in ammonia, placed inside punctured coffee cans with lids, can discourage opossums from specific areas like under a porch or shed. Replenish the ammonia daily. Homemade sprays made from hot peppers and onions, strained and applied with a garden sprayer, can also help around perimeters. Do not use ammonia-based deterrents anywhere near baby animals.
If an opossum is nesting under a structure, placing a radio tuned to a talk station and a bright light near the den during the daytime (when it’s trying to sleep) can encourage it to relocate on its own within a day or two.
Don’t Trap and Relocate
It might seem logical to live-trap an opossum and drive it to a park or wooded area, but in many states this is illegal. In New York, for example, it’s against the law to move any trapped animal off your property. The reasons go beyond paperwork: relocated animals face high mortality because they don’t know where to find food, water, or shelter in unfamiliar territory. Relocation also risks spreading diseases to new areas.
Laws vary by state, but most require you to contact a licensed Nuisance Wildlife Control Operator if you want an animal professionally removed. In many jurisdictions, opossums have specific permit requirements. Before taking any trapping action, check your state wildlife agency’s rules.
If You Find a Baby Opossum
Baby opossums are a different situation entirely. Mother opossums carry up to a dozen tiny babies in their pouch, and sometimes joeys fall off or are found crawling near a dead mother on the road. Whether a baby needs help depends on its size.
The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources uses a clear rule: if the baby measures at least 8 inches from the tip of its nose to the base of its tail (not including the tail) and weighs more than about 7 ounces, it’s old enough to survive on its own. Leave it alone.
If the baby is smaller than that, between roughly 1.5 and 7 ounces, it needs a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. At this stage, opossum babies are often found near their dead mother and cannot survive without care. Very tiny babies still attached to the mother or barely furred have a slimmer chance of survival but should still be brought to a rehabilitator as quickly as possible. Don’t attempt to feed or raise a baby opossum yourself. Contact your state’s wildlife agency for a list of licensed rehabilitators in your area.
Playing Dead or Actually Hurt?
If you find an opossum lying motionless in your yard, it’s probably not dead. “Playing possum” is an involuntary stress response, not a conscious decision. The animal’s body goes limp, its breathing becomes shallow, and it may drool or release a foul-smelling fluid from its glands. The eyes often stay open with a glazed look. This state can last anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
Leave the animal alone and keep pets away. Check back in a few hours. If it’s gone, it recovered and moved on. If it’s still in the same position after many hours, or if you see visible injuries like bleeding, a clearly broken limb, or fly eggs on the body, that animal may genuinely be hurt and a call to a wildlife rehabilitator is appropriate.
Possum vs. Opossum: A Quick Note
If you’re in North America, the animal in your yard is technically a Virginia opossum, the only marsupial on the continent. “Possum” is the common shorthand that nearly everyone uses, and no one will misunderstand you. True possums are a separate group of about 67 marsupial species found in Australia, New Guinea, and Indonesia. They look quite different and don’t play dead. The advice in this article applies to the Virginia opossum found throughout the United States and southern Canada.