Story at a glance
- An unnamed New Zealand woman late Saturday told police she was unable to leave her home because of an aggressive young possum.
- The animal reportedly attacked her earlier in the day before charging at her repeatedly from outside a window.
- One of the responding officers was attacked by the possum but was uninjured, and the animal was later released into the wild.
A New Zealand woman on Saturday told police she was being held hostage in her home by an aggressive and unpredictable assailant: a baby possum.
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The woman, identified only as a University of Otago postgraduate student, called police late Saturday night to report being threatened, telling them: “I’m being held hostage by a possum,” the Dunedin Central Police Station told local media.
The possum, now known as the “Black Road Ripper,” a reference to the street on which the incident took place, had reportedly attacked the woman while she was unpacking groceries from her car earlier that day.
“I had put my stuff on the veranda and as I was heading back to my car…I heard this rustling,” she told New Zealand news site Stuff. “I thought, ‘That’s weird,’ and as I was taking stuff from the back seat something ran up my leg.”
“I pulled it off me, thinking it was a cat, and then I saw it was a possum,” she said. But the possum wouldn’t let up, and kept “charging at her,” she added.
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Even after the woman took refuge in her home, the juvenile possum reportedly ran at her from outside a window, charging the glass multiple times.
After contacting the police when animal control advised her to do so, officers arrived at the woman’s home about 20 minutes later. One of them was attacked by the possum, according to the woman, but the animal was momentarily stunned by a flare gun and carried into the back of the police car.
The responding officer attacked by the possum was uninjured and the possum was later released into the wild “to prevent further citizen harassment,” Senior Sergeant Craig Dinnissen said.
Possums are somewhat of a nuisance in New Zealand, and though control efforts have cut their numbers, once estimated to be between 60 and 70 million, by more than half, their population remains about six times that of the country’s human population.
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