A Texas woman got quite a surprise when she discovered an opossum had taken up residence in her Christmas tree after she heard it sneezing while she was working nearby.
“I'm literally freaking out right now. I have no idea how this possum ended up in my house, in my tree. I try to get him out but he won't let me. “I don’t know what to do,” the woman stressed in a video on TikTok shared by The Mirror, which had reached more than 6.5 million views as of Tuesday.
It was toward the end of November as the woman was quietly working in her living room when she reportedly heard two sneezes coming from her newly decorated Christmas tree.
With none of her three dogs or cat in sight, she reportedly began investigating near the Christmas tree when she spotted a long, fat rat's tail sticking out of the branches.
“Then I saw this huge gray ball of fur breathing. I stopped because I was in shock. I didn't know what it was. I was a little panicked,” she continued in a second video.
She gathered her courage – and her potholders – in both hands and then tried to grab the small mammal and free it from the tree.
“They have hands, and he was clinging to the tree for dear life. […]. After trying to lure him with food, I finally gave it my all and plucked his fingers from the branches one by one. It was a struggle,” she said.
She eventually managed to get out and corner the possum, which was released after a call to an animal control agency.
This isn't the first time a possum has made headlines this year. One reportedly broke into an Airbnb in the middle of the night and defecated in the bed where an Australian woman was staying. She had reportedly shared this on TikTok, according to The Mirror.
In Quebec, opossums have been found on the south shore of Montreal and in Montérégie and even near Trois-Rivières since 2017, according to an article from the Montreal Science Center.