The Leadbeater Possum (aka. Fairy Possum)

We watched a video (there was a link to it from the Melbourne Zoo website – Act Now). We will need to return to it as an amazing conversation took over the session part way through. Below is a snapshot of this conversation.

We paused the video part way through and made predictions. My main question was: What might their threats to survival be?

• Poisonous spiders like white tails and red backs.
• They shouldn’t live near rivers because they might drown.
• Rubbish and cats. Cats because they come out at night. People throw it on the ground and they might eat it. 
• Owls because they’re birds and they’re nocturnal.
• Eagles ‘cause they live in trees, and falcons. Birds of prey. 
• We don’t have them in Australia.
• Maybe some foxes that come out at night.

I then explained how they were introduced and we had touched on this topic briefly when we read The Rabbits by John Marsden and Saun Tan.

• We should kill them! 
• That’s a terrible thing! 
• They’re part of nature. 
• Well then we should send them back to where they came from. 
• That would be mean ‘cause they would just like whichever country they would be in. 
• You should actually send them back because if we don’t they’ll keep killing our creatures and then they’ll come extinct. 
• I think we should just put a fence between the animals but the foxes might climb the fences.
• Grow some carrots in a big fence and then grow some food outside so they don’t eat all of our plants. 

In our Community Bush Walks, some children have been interested in weeds, introduced plants and natives. Thus, a link is emerging. It is so interesting and exciting!