They’re poison in Aotearoa but protected in Australia – and in inner-city Sydney, I’m grateful for any encounter with wildlife Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email A few days ago, after a weekend of partying at Mardi Gras, I was in my garden at 2am in the quiet night air, trying to recover enough to be able to walk upstairs and get into bed. I was minding my own business when out of the deep silence I heard a strange scurrying, and I looked up just in time to see a big fluffy tail shoot past. For a moment I thought I’d partied too hard and was hallucinating, but then I decided it was probably one of the large neighbourhood cats who cruelly ignore me no matter how casually I pss pss at them. Then I heard more notably freaky noises, and noticed the suspicious shaking of some of our greenery. Turns out it was a huge possum, mistaking a tallish houseplant in the back yard of an inner Sydney terrace for a big safe tree in which to hide from a normal human woman. I went closer and spoke in what I considered to be a helpful voice, informing the possum that it had come to a dead end, and it might want to come down. Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney Continue reading...