Wildlife officials in Hawaii are rattled after an opossum turned up in a shipping container on Tuesday, the second of the North American mainland-native marsupial-ish hillbilly delicacy to make the journey to the Aloha State, raising fears of an invasion of its isolated ecosystem, KHON reports.
The first opossum was caught late last month after it was spotted on the window ledge of an office building in downtown Honolulu. State Department of Agriculture quarantine manager Jon Ho tells KHON the two are the sixth and seventh live opossums caught in Hawaii since 2005 – all of them appearing in the summer months – and theorizes that it’s simply heat on the mainland US prompting the ugly little bastards to creep into shipping containers. “Anecdotally it’s hot. They’re basically looking for shelter. Containers are open when these guys are doing their loading or it’s inside a pallet they get placed in and they get a trip to Hawaii,” said Ho, who adds that the state needs to step up on funding his agency because 65 inspectors simply can’t handle 4,000-plus containers arriving weekly and may God have mercy on Hawaii if one of they miss is just wall-to-wall opossums.