An Injured Opossum Near The Day Care on Beacon Street: Who Do You Call?

BROOKLINE, MA — Before most people had even gotten to work this morning, Animal Control Officer David Cheung was helping to save lives. Someone called police to report what looked like an injured opossum near the entrance to a day care on Beacon Street in Washington Square. And Cheung was on the scene.

"Are you here to take care of the 'Possum," asked a woman nearby holding her hand to her chest. "Oh I'm so glad," she said.

Cheung hopped out of his specially equipped truck, took a look and set to getting out a black garbage bag to line an old cardboard box, where he would lower the injured animal.

"It looks like his back legs were run over," he said, before grabbing a long tool to help guide the normally nocturnal creature to safety. He scooped the opossum up and gently lowered it into a box, noting a damaged tail on the way down.

Although opossums do not carry rabies, places like Tufts teaching clinics won't take them unless they're babies, he said.

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Cheung said he'd have to make some calls to different wildlife clinics to see if anyone would take him and help the little guy out.

Animal Control Responds to calls where animals that are sick or injured, such as the opossum. Cheung responds to a lot of reports of people waking up to bats in their apartments when they feel like they may have been exposed to a potential bite. As rare as it is, the health department advises those who think they may have been bitten by a bat to have the bat checked out (which involves killing it), to test it for rabies.

He also responds to reports of aggressive animals that pose a safety hazard: such as dog bites and aggressive turkeys, though there's not much he can do about the turkeys, as they're protected wildlife. He did one help capture a cranky cockatoo that had escaped its cage in Brookline.

But for those residents wondering what to do about a raccoon on their balcony staring into their home (it's happened), or a squirrel terrorizing their attic, that's up to the property owner to take care of, he says. The Brookline Police generally advises people to contact a licensed pest control company to assist them to solve such nuisance problems.

Here's a link to the Division Of Fisheries and Wildlife guild to finding a Problem Animal Control agent. These people are licensed with the state to perform nuisance animal calls.

http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/dfg/dfw/fish-wildlife-plants/pac-agents-districts.html

Photo: David Cheung rescues an injured opossum that crawled to a doorway early Tuesday morning, May 23, 2017. Photo by Jenna Fisher/ Patch