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Orangutan launches possum out of enclosure at zoo — as horrified visitors scream

Officers received a call late on Sunday night from a distressed woman who said “a possum was holding her hostage” at her home in the South Island city of Dunedin. “When she would exit her house and attempt to reach her car, the possum would charge at her and she would flee inside,” Snr Sgt Craig Dinnissen said. When the police arrived and approached the front door, a juvenile possum came out of the dark and climbed an officer’s leg. Dinnissen suspected it was either an escaped pet or had recently been separated from its mother. Maurice the pet Possum...

What is the core function of a healthy adaptive brain? This researcher says its function is not merely to sort the input of our senses, but to create predictive models based on the cumulative weight of that input. This hypothesis strikes me as rather obvious and thus not entirely insightful. Though that’s plainly not an opinion shared by many, who believe an orderly brain is one that disregards its own predicted models in favor of those espoused by the Huffington Post. Here’s how the article described the function of this seemingly tertiary organ. The main purpose of the brain, as...

Oakland A’s fans may be singing the praises of the rally possum at the Coliseum. Sure there have been sewage problems at the ballpark and various other issues, but none of them came before a game-winning rally in extra innings like this little marsupial did on Monday. But it was at the beginning of the inning after the first out, as centerfielder Sam Fuld walked up to the plate, that a possum went running along the warning track and vanished under the stands. Fuld would go on to a hit and later score the game-winning run for Oakland. Derek Norris...

Tony Abbott has delayed moving into Australia's official prime ministerial residence because it is run-down and infested by possums but will instead take up digs at the national police academy.

Norfolk, Va. – A pregnant Norfolk woman called NewsChannel 3 saying a possum had fallen through her bedroom ceiling! She was so terrified when she saw it she grabbed her gun and shot it in the nose. Previously, she tried to take action and contact her property manager many times about scratching noises in her ceiling. We took action for her. When NewsChannel 3 showed up at Andrea Baskerville’s Norfolk apartment, we found blood, feces and urine scattered around her bedroom.

A New Year's Eve possum drop that attracts thousands of people to a tiny western North Carolina town will go on this year, with one big change: It won't involve a live possum.

Early morning commuters had a furry surprise on their trip into Manhattan last week. Riders on a Manhattan-bound D train had to evacuate the car at around 4:30 a.m. on Friday morning after someone spotted the adorable — yet possibly dangerous — opossum taking a free ride, an MTA spokesman confirmed. The incident was first reported by the New York Times. The four-legged creature reportedly boarded the train at Coney Island in Brooklyn. The train was first stopped at West Fourth Street, where police officers came on with gloves to try to get the opossum out. When that didn't work,...

A survivor of the attacks Thursday near Eilat feigned death for an hour after she and her husband were hit by terrorist gunfire. Her husband was killed. Yosef and Esther Levy of Holon were driving on Highway 12 when they were ambushed by terrorists with guns and bomb belts. The terrorists sprayed the car with fire, hitting both passengers and causing the vehicle to overturn. “There was blood on the floor, and I heard my husband moaning,” Esther later told Yediot Aharonot. “I saw that his shirt was covered in blood.” Esther was hit in the shoulder and suffered additional...

A new addition to the Leipzig Zoo has yet to be seen by the public, but that hasn't stopped her from becoming a star. Heidi, a young cross-eyed opossum, is shaping up to be the most popular furry critter in Germany since Knut the celebrity polar bear. She won't be visible to the public until July, but a cross-eyed opossum has turned into Germany's new media darling. Two-and-a-half-year-old Heidi has even inspired a YouTube hit, her own high-end stuffed animal, and has more than 49,000 friends on Facebook, and counting. "It really is surprising how famous and loved she is...

New Years Eve Lowering of the Opossum This year's festivities start at 10 PM. This is a non-alcoholic family event Pre-show warm up provided by the Barker Bros. at 8:45 PM "...We bring the possum to start the event and then the blessing and then we bring out the queens of the last ten years and show them off...and the church singing of songs and then the drop." Clay

State police have charged a central Pennsylvania man with public drunkenness after he was seen giving mouth-to-mouth "resuscitation" to a long-dead opossum along a highway.

The most recent........

A caller told police he had shot a large rabid possum in his front yard and was concerned that the possum might attack his dog. He was advised on discharging a firearm in city limits.

Possum breaks record with year-long snooze 14 October 2007 NewScientist.com news service A possum has set an enviable record for doing absolutely nothing. After stuffing itself full of food in a laboratory, one curled up and hibernated for a record 367 days. Some mammals, such as ground squirrels, hibernate for up to six months through winter, while a western jumping mouse (Zapus princeps) once hibernated for 320 days in a lab. That record has now been smashed by an Australian eastern pygmy possum (Cercartetus nanus) in Fritz Geiser's lab at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales...

When a food safety inspector walked into a market in Queens, he noticed the store had an interesting special posted on its front window: 12 beefy armadillos. In Brooklyn, inspectors found 15 pounds of iguana meat at a West Indian market and 200 pounds of cow lungs for sale at another market. At a West African grocery in Manhattan, the store was selling smoked rodent meat from a refrigerated display case. An inspector quickly seized a couple pounds of it. All of it was headed for the dinner table. All of it was also illegal. Authorities say the discoveries are...

(12-22) 19:23 PST ENGLEWOOD, Pa. (AP) -- Mary Kathleen O'Connor, 16, doing some studying for school about 6 a.m. Tuesday, said she was the first to be startled by an apparent Christmas tree stowaway. "I'm looking at the tree and the angel just pops off," she said. "And a second later, this head just popped up. The eyes were, like, glowing. I was thinking, 'Oh my God!' And I screamed." Other family members came running. "We looked at it and I thought it might have been a fake," said her father, Michael O'Connor, a Frackville attorney. "But then it moved...

Wal-Mart is facing the largest class action lawsuit ever been brought against a private company. As many as 1.6 million women may join the suit and the possible payout could exceed $1 billion dollars. What are class action lawsuits, and why have they become so prominent in the news?Class action lawsuits are an aspect of tort law, which addresses harm or loss that is caused either deliberately or through carelessness by the actions of another. A class action suit is brought by one or more plaintiffs on behalf of a larger group that has a common interest, a common harm....

Heard Of The City Mouse? Try Bigger & Far Uglier By: Nora Krug - www.nytimes.com January 2004 New York - What was that furry creature parked on a ledge at 135 East 35th Street? A big rat? A cat? A small bear? For nearly eight hours, a quiet corner in Murray Hill was transformed into a kind of temporary zoo, as passers-by stopped to gawk and guess the identity of the long-snouted cat-size animal that paced along a narrow stone ledge about nine feet over a brownstone garden, sniffing, shaking and yawning. "I was thinking it was a hedgehog, because...

Erik S. Lesser for The New York TimesThe possum that will be lowered, withmuch fanfare, from Mr. Logan's garageon New Year's Eve. It will be releasedat the end of the night.RASSTOWN, N.C., Dec. 30 — The lights are strung, the stage is set and Baby New Year is waiting in a cage, hissing. Brasstown, once again, is ready for the Possum Drop. Yes, the annual New Year's Eve Possum Drop, the one and only, inspired by the dropping of a certain illuminated ball 670 miles away. On Thursday, at the stroke of midnight, at the exact moment that hundreds of...