Not long ago, a woman in Tasmania, Australia, was tidying up her pantry.
Suddenly, she noticed something peculiar amidst the clutter. On one wall of the cupboard, she spotted a dark, fuzzy patch.
“She saw a mound of ‘mold’ in the far corner, leaving her wondering, ‘What had leaked?’” Wildlife and Community Together Tasmania wrote in a Facebook post.
Perplexed by what she saw, the woman took a cloth and reached in to scrub away the moldy spot.
But suddenly, the mold patch started to move.
“[It] frightened the socks off her!”, the organization writes in the post.
As she observed the moving patch, the woman suddenly realized it wasn’t mold at all but an animal.
Unsure of its identity, she could only guess that it might be a mouse. She soon decided to reach out to local wildlife carer Jude Lennox for some guidance.
Lennox determined that the visitor was an eastern pygmy possum, a diminutive marsupial indigenous to Tasmania and southeastern Australia.
As the name suggests, the eastern pygmy possum is a pocket-sized possum and these animals are very shy and difficult to catch. It was amazing that the little creature had ventured into the woman’s home at all. Though the possum seemed a bit sluggish, she wasn’t sick.
Lennox took the little possum home, where she could safely overwinter in a quiet room surrounded by containers of native flowers and finely chopped grapes.
The wildlife carer hopes that this story will encourage others to treat wild animals with compassion and respect.
“Like all of our awesome wildlife, it is our responsibility to protect and value this and all other species,” Lennox told The Dodo. “We must end the general indifference shown to our wildlife and their welfare.”
This unexpected encounter serves as a testament to the diverse wildlife that inhabits our surroundings, even in the most unexpected places.
It underscores the importance of compassion and understanding toward all creatures, no matter how small, and the need to coexist harmoniously with our natural environment. As stories like these remind us, there is always more to discover and appreciate in the world around us.