Should You Handle an Opossum with Bare Hands?

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It is certainly not safe to handle an opossum, or any other animal pest for that matter, with bare hands. This is because they are possible carriers of various infectious diseases, some of which can have serious implications for humans and pets.



The situations in which you may need to handle an opossum with your hands include during trapping with a cage, physical removal of an opossum that found its way into your living room or bathroom, and physical removal of baby or adult opossums from your walls or attic. While transporting and releasing a cage-trapped opossum, it may attempt to scratch the carrier’s hands in its agitated state.

Opossums are capable of causing a lot of nuisance when they make noise, litter everywhere with their feces, and destroy your structures. However, the risk of contracting an infection from them may just outweigh all of that disturbance. Since it is not particularly easy to identify a diseased critter, it is highly advisable to handle them all with protective gloves.

Oposssums are not characteristically aggressive animals though. When they feel threatened, they either play possum (pretend to be dead), or bare their sizable teeth with a growl to scare the predator away. Despite that, it is rare for them to actually bite, and they can be regarded as harmless animals.

Although they are not carriers of the deadly rabies virus, opossums are hosts for other parasites – like fleas, mites and ticks, which organisms are capable of transmitting a host of other diseases. Fleas for instance transmit Bubonic Plague, and ticks transmit Lyme disease, which is characterized by sore throat, fever, coughing, fatigue and nausea. These diseases are better avoided by the use of gloves.

Hand gloves are not only required when handling the critter itself, but also while cleaning up its mess. Opossum droppings are also rich in disease pathogens. Leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, tuberculosis and salmonella are just some of the parasitic diseases that can be contracted by touching opossum droppings with your bare hands.

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