There are times when a mother will have babies and then something happens to the mother. It goes out to forage for food and gets caught by another animal, or it just gets hurt and is unable to return to her babies. Then what happens to the babies? They most likely die because they are ill equipped to be able to care for themselves.
Sometimes a person will come across these babies and find that the mother is nowhere to be found. This leaves an interesting situation for a caring person. If it were an animal like birds the person could care for these baby birds and nurse them until they were ready to go off on their own. There are many places that will provide assistance in how to care for these animals, or you can look out on the internet and find how to care for the birds. Raising them is really a pretty easy little chore.
But what do you do when it is a set of babies from an opossum? What do you do for those animals, because they are not cute little creatures like birds? These creatures can have disease with them, making even handling them a real risk. What do you do then?
That is a good question. The first thing you want to do is to consult someone who has expertise in this area. That would mean calling the county animal control to see if they would be willing to care for the animals. Many counties may send someone out to take the animals and to take them to an animal shelter to be cared for. This would obviously be the best solution.
However, this is not always a solution that is available to you. This leaves the caring of the babies up to you, but opossums can be dangerous. Not only can they make you sick, but these are wild animals that can be quite dangerous. If they were to scratch or bite you the repercussions can be quite serious.
While you don’t want to take risks with your own health, you also understand that if you leave the babies out without their mother that they are goners. They cannot care for themselves and the first time some other animal comes along they are going to be killed. So what can you do?
The most sensible thing to do is nothing. Maybe the mother will return, or maybe they will die, but you cannot endanger your health. If you cannot accept this then what you must do is get some protective clothing that would protect you as fully as possible. Feed the babies through baby bottles, without actually touching them yourself. This would allow you to care for yourself, while reducing the risk.
Read more:
Opossum Control,
How to Get Rid of Opossums,
Opossum Feces.
