I wasn’t well that night and I had sent my partner to the chemist.When he arrived home he said that a police car was going up and down our street with their spotlight on. I told him to go back outside and hail them down as the police were probably looking for us to deliver a possum.

I was waiting on a locum doctor to come and see me that night and guess when he turns up, right when I was giving the possum its first feed. I tried to talk to the doctor and feed the possum but she was taking so long. As she was easy to feed, I asked my partner, John to finish her feed.

John had never fed a possum before and had only just become possum friendly.When I first started caring for possums John wasn’t very comfortable with the possums. If I left him with a possum down his jumper he would start stressing out if the possum got out of its pouch because he thought is was going to bite him (John’s story is that he thought the possum would go to the toilet on him, but I know the truth).

The first feed went really well and the doctor discounted his fee because of our and the possums entertainment factor.

At 1:30am that morning it was down to the vet’s for the possum to be given some subcutaneous fluids under her skin as she was very dehydrated and the oral fluids were not helping.

We called the possum Ruby after Fauna Rescue’s mascot “Ruby Roo” as she looked more like a Kangaroo than a possum. She was very underweight and her head looked very long and too big for her body.

When Ruby came into care she had some red dots on her nose that looked like a graze. These dots spread further on her face and onto her paws and they became scabby.We took Ruby to a vet and she thought Ruby had mange, ringworm or a staphylococcal infection. A skin scrap was done and no mites were found so it was either a staph infection or ringworm. Ringworm will go away on its own but a staph infection needs to be treated with antibiotics. The vet thought it was more likely that Ruby had a staph infection.

A staph infection is brought on by stress and is contagious. Ruby could get it again if she is stressed. So Ruby can not be released and will have to stay in captivity. The antibiotics worked but Ruby looked very scruffy. She had fur loss where the infection was including a strip down the centre of her head that looked like a reverse mohawk.

We went camping when we had Ruby and she came camping too. Ruby was in a cage at that stage and she was in the tent with us at night. She had got rather used to being with us at night. When we came back home and Ruby was put in the inside aviary in the possum room. She was not very impressed and called for us through the night.

We didn’t have room to keep Ruby so she has gone to live with another carer and we have unlimited visiting rights.Ruby is a very lucky possum.