January 16 - Hide-and-Seek
Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

During the coldest part of winter you are unlikely to see opossums. These pale gray animals invaded North America from the south hundreds of years ago. Because they developed in a warm climate, opossums are not adapted to the cold and are subject to frostbite. Bare tails and ears take the brunt of the punishment, giving opossums a rather shabby appearance. So during the dead of winter, opossums hole up for a time until temperatures moderate a bit. They depend on fat stored in their tails to help them through sparse times. Even so, opossums seem to be pushing their range slowly northward. Milder winters might have allowed for this, or possibly humans have inadvertently provided food and shelter to them. Even so, opossums are still vulnerable to sub-freezing temperatures. That’s why they play a winter hide-and-seek with the cold.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.