Karen Wils photo A young joey, a young opossum hides until sunset in the garden.

ESCANABA — Gardening with a kangaroo’s cousin has been a new experience for me this summer.

Yes, a native-born Michigan marsupial picked beans, watered and weeded with me last week.

With a face only a mother could love and a long hairless tail, the opossum is an odd critter to behold.

It is the only native marsupial in North America. (It has a pouch in which they raise their young in, just like the kangaroo.)

Between my tomato plants and raspberry bushes there was this whitish gray, long whiskered fella with black bead-like eyes. It was a joey, a juvenile Virginia opossum.

Raccoons, skunks, porcupines and deer, OK, but in all my born days, I never thought I’d see a southern creature like an opossum in my backyard.

People think of Granny and Jed Clampit when they think of possums. Fifty years ago, opossums were unheard of in Upper Michigan. The Virginia opossum of the southern states has greatly increased their territory over the last few decades.

A warming climate, milder winters, abundant food and hitching rides north with humans, has brought a thriving population to Michigan.

Nearly all of the northern opossums have some issues from frostbite like missing ears, tail parts gone or missing toes but still survive.

I saw my first wild opossum about eighteen years ago near our camp eating out of a bird feeder. So, I had to gather some information about this unique animal.

I read that our North American opossum is an opossum and not a possum as it is sometimes called. A possum is a completely different animal that lives in Australia.

Many people are afraid of our opossum and think that they carry rabies and other diseases. They do not. Some folks think that they are vicious because they have more teeth than any other land mammal. Their teeth are to intimidate predators. Opossums are non-aggressive animals. All those funny looking teeth (50 of them) help it to eat, bugs, grubs, snails, eggs, nuts and fruits and even carrion.

Another thing opossums are mighty fond of eating is wood ticks.

Opossums have thumbs and can carry things to build nests in trees. They leave a very strange looking paw print in your garden too.

Being accustomed to life in the Deep South, opossums have frequently had run ins with rattlesnakes. Not to worry. This amazing creature is immune to many poisonous snake bites. In fact, a protein from the opossum is being tested as a broad-spectrum snakebite treatment.

My husband discovered the young opossum in our garden in the early morning. I was fascinated with it and wanted to take its picture. He hid the best he could. He was shy.

I smiled at him, and he showed me his pointy teeth. His black shoe-button eyes did not like the rising sun.  Then he did what opossums do best, he played dead.

It wasn’t until nightfall again that the southern gentleman scurried back out into the field to live by the north shore.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.