Opossoms — they’re just like us!
On Feb. 10, Nebraska Wildlife Rehab, an organization that cares for injured, orphaned and sick wild animals, posted on Facebook about a furry little critter that overindulged her way to internet stardom.
“Sometimes a sweet tooth just can’t wait until Valentine’s Day!” the organization wrote. “This Virginia opossum was admitted today after reportedly devouring an ENTIRE Costco chocolate cake.”
In the post are two photos that paint a vivid picture. In one, a note written by an employee describes the opossum on arrival: “panting alot however mobile and alert.” The second shows the opossum being handled by gloved hands, looking none too pleased.
The organization wrote that with some time in rehab and less baked goods from buy-in-bulk warehouse clubs, the “choco-holic should be stabilized enough to return to the wild.”
“She is definitely a little cranky about our strict ‘zero chocolate’ policy!” the post concluded. “Same, opossum.... same.”
More than 13,000 people reacted to the post, and 1,400 comments adorned the dessert-downing diva with words of support.
“I would not be mobile nor alert, so good on you possum,” commented one Facebook user.
“To be fair, if I ate a whole Costco chocolate cake I would probably be panting a lot, too,” wrote another.
“I feel this opossum in my soul,” commented one person, and another added, “We’ve all been there, girl.”
“I relate to this opossum on a spiritual level,” added someone else.
You may be wondering where this cake-chomping champion came from, and as it turns out, she’s a suburban gal.
“We’ve lived in this house over nine years, and we’ve never had an animal on our deck,” Kim Doggett, a realtor and resident of Gretna, Nebraska, tells TODAY.com. She says her family happened upon the mousse-munching marsupial in her backyard while preparing to have guests over for a Super Bowl party.
“We set out food in the winter because it’s just extra fridge space because it’s really cold in Nebraska,” Doggett says, adding that she placed the dessert — a Kirkland Signature Tuxedo Chocolate Mousse Cake that weighs over 2-and-a-half pounds — on a coffee table next to an outdoor sectional sofa.
Later, she asked her son Hayden to set some homemade peanut butter protein balls out on the deck next to the cake — but he ran into a bit of an obstacle.
“He goes out there, he opens the door, and the next thing I know, I hear him slamming the door,” she says, adding that her son then informed her of the animal lounging on the outdoor sofa.
“I go over, pop open the door, turn the deck light on and it’s laying there on the sectional couch curled up in a ball,” she says. “I’ve got chocolate footprints all over my new cream deck furniture and the Costco cake is on the ground in front of the couch. There were some crumbs left.”
They tried to scare it away by making noise. Hayden, a hockey player, even took out his stick to bang on the deck in hopes the opossum would scurry away.
The Doggett family noticed the critter wouldn’t budge and was panting, so they knew something was wrong.
So, Doggett called the Humane Society, who came and scooped up the opossum with relative ease and kept the creature under its care until the next morning when she was dropped off at Nebraska Wildlife Rehab.
It turns out, it wasn’t just all that chocolate cake that was making the opossum sick.
“She’s doing really good, she’s undergoing treatment for lead,” Laura Stastny, executive director of Nebraska Wildlife Rehab, tells TODAY.com. The animal’s current residence is Baldwin Wildlife Center and Hubbard Family Wildlife Hospital, where she is undergoing chelation therapy to reduce the toxicity in her little body.
Stastny says lead toxicity in opossums is often found because there’s lead in the soil, and they eat things that are in the ground.
She says the animal is also showing mild signs of pancreatitis from consuming too much fat. (The cake is 23 grams of fat per slice.)
“She ate way too much chocolate, and now she’s got some kind of a mildly inflamed digestive tract, but she’s doing fine,” she says.
Stastny says that the opossum will be back to prowling shape in about a month, once her lead levels are down. The organization plans on releasing her back into her home neighborhood.
The Doggett family is having a laugh about the whole thing and even named their furry friend “Blossom the Opossum.”
But what will the family do if she comes back looking for a sweet treat?
“I am sure it’ll be back up on my deck looking for cake,” Doggett says. “It will not have cake.”
