I like possums, they are endearingly ugly and can't help it.
No possums here in Germany, except in zoos (I wonder why, do they require more warmth than raccoons?), but recently, wee wee hours of the morning, I was riding my bike near the woods in the dark and I saw a raccoon climb very swiftly a rather high steel fence up and down - it paused at the top, looked at me (I was marveling at it), but then decided to not trust my adoration for much longer and made off. Raccoons aren't the most elegant animals, but he/she scurried up and down that steel fence like it wasn't there!
Raccoons, not native to Europe, have for more than 80 years now been an invasive species in Germany (and all hopes of ever getting rid of them again have been dashed by now, there is more than a million of them), but I had never seen one before (i) in the wild, (ii) that close (iii) for that long a time. I like them though I suspect that one of them was the culprit who ate one of my larger goldfish in our pond clean down to the fish bone one night. But that's nature, as Edith always says (when the winter-starved herons fly in!). I also have a hunch that the recent intruders of/visitors to our roof structure (we live right by the forest) were not polecats after all, but their larger and more fleshy distant (formerly) North American relatives. Aren't furry Yankees the worst!
