An Australian couple had just settled down in front of their TV, expecting to have a relaxing evening.
But that’s not what happened.
As the couple tried to unwind, their dog was winding up. He barked and barked, becoming increasingly agitated. “Was there a rat in the house?” they wondered.
As the couple tried to figure out what was going on, they noticed something amiss with one of their living room walls.
On one wall, close to the ceiling, a hole had materialized in the plasterboard. Through the hole, a tiny pink nose emerged.
The nose didn’t belong to a rat, but to a brushtail possum, a nocturnal marsupial found along Australia’s east coast.
The couple assumed the animal was stuck and trying to get out. They hoisted themselves up to cut a larger hole out of the plasterboard wall. But the animal evaded rescue, scuttling out of their reach.
The next thing they did was phone Amy Wregg, a wildlife emergency trauma responder and veterinary nurse based on Australia’s Gold Coast.
When Wregg arrived, she asked the couple if she could cut a little bit more out of their wall. They agreed.
“They were definitely more worried about the possum’s welfare than the wall,” Wregg told Yahoo ! News.
Once the hole was cut, the possum suddenly wriggled her way out of the wall, back into the roof and eventually out of the house. In other words, the possum rescued herself, leaving the couple wondering why the possum was trying to break into their living room in the first place.
“I’m not sure why it was chewing out through the walls because there were plenty of ways it could get out of the wall,” Wregg said. “I think they had a fruit bowl nearby and maybe it could smell it.”
The couple patched up all of the holes — both inside and outside — to prevent the possum from coming again. They also decided to put up a possum box, an outside structure that provides a refuge to possums looking for shelter.
Wregg said the possum box was a “great idea.”
“Unless you fix the problem where they’re getting into the roof, and provide [a] habitat for them, they’re just gonna keep coming in,” Wregg said.