Video: Woman Discovers Opossum Hiding in Her Christmas Tree
A Texas woman received an unexpected holiday visitor earlier this month after finding an opossum hiding in her Christmas tree. The ensuing video footage she took while still in shock at discovering the marsupial has since gone viral on TikTok, garnering nearly 7 million views.
Dallas-Fort Worth-based media marketing manager Brett Ingram told Fox News Digital she was first clued onto the opossum’s presence when she heard a “soft sneeze” while finishing up some work. Initially, she thought her cat might have brought a critter inside or somehow kittens had found their way inside her home.
“I kept working thinking I was maybe just hearing things,” Ingram recalled. “Then I heard it again with some other squeaking noises.”
Shortly after she began investigating, the 29-year-old noticed the opossum’s naked tail sticking out of the tree while crouched behind her couch.
“I am literally freaking out right now,” she says in the TikTok video, which shows the opossum peeking out from inside her tree. “I have no idea how this possum got in my house and up into my tree. And I’m trying to get him out and it will not let me, I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know how it got in here, I don’t leave my doors open. Somebody help!”
I don’t understand how this thing is in my house right now.
Ingram said she contacted a wildlife and rehab volunteer friend who gave her tips on getting the opossum out of the tree, but it was easier said than done. Wearing a pair of gloves to protect herself, she was able to pry the animal’s tiny fingers off the tree. But then it got loose in her home and began running back and forth under her couches.
“I just didn’t want to hurt him. I was really just calling for concern [to see] if babies were in [the animal’s] pouch,” she explained. “I started to try to get him out, but he was holding onto the branches. He had some strength because he was big.”
Up close and personal with the christmas possum ? #possum #christmas #opossum
Eventually, Ingram was able to push the couch aside and pick up the opossum under her arm just “like a cat or dog” and take it outside. Although it bared its teeth at her, it didn’t hiss.
Though they may appear scary, opossums are generally beneficial animals. Not only does their low body temperature prevents them from catching rabies, but they control the population of pests such as cockroaches, rats, and mice. Additionally, they eat Lyme-disease-carrying ticks.
Last month, another opossum made headlines for being somewhere it shouldn’t have been, when one ran out onto the field at a college football game in Lubbock, TX between TCU and Texas Tech. In that instance, the opossum was likewise removed from the field unharmed.
