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We saw some animals like opossums, and flying squirrels, which we took to be bats; and we occasionally caught sight of wild dogs or dingos, hideous, savage-looking creatures, though they always ran away from us when we moved towards them or shouted.
A little examination of the trunk of a tree which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending and descending is sufficient to inform him whether one went up the night before without coming down again or not." Fennimore Cooper lost his chance. He would have known how to value these people. He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them for the brightest Mohawk he ever invented.
"Why, I thought," said Johnny, "that there were no wild animals in New Holland, except kangaroos and opossums: my book of beasts, birds, and fishes, says so." This was a fact in Natural History which I was not prepared to gainsay; especially when backed by so redoubtable an authority as "the book of beasts, birds, and fishes."
She said there were Crickets, Grasshoppers, Mice, Lizards, Swallows, Opossums, Flying Foxes, Kookooburras, Magpies, and Shepherd's Companions "Stop!" interrupted the Platypus, with a wave of its web foot; "that is the right one." "Who?" asked the Kangaroo and Dot anxiously, together. "The bird you call Shepherd's Companion. Some of you call it Rickety Dick, or Willy Wagtail."
As the opossums were the first of these animals whose habits became generally known to Europeans, we shall speak first of them; and it may be remarked, that although there are several species in the Australian countries resembling the true opossums, and are even called opossums, yet among naturalists the name is usually limited to the pouched animals of America.
A strange view. Gratified at our discoveries. Return to Fort Mueller. Digging with a tomahawk. Storing water. Wallaby for supper. Another attack. Gibson's gardens. Opossums destructive. Birds. Thoughts. Physical peculiarities of the region. Haunted. Depart. The way we wash our clothes is primitive it can only be done at a depot.
Opossums and native cats are unfit to cumber the earth, and must be hunted into holes, wherever possible. Cows and other horned animals must not come into the yard, or even look over the garden fence, under penalties. Black fellows must be barked at, and their dogs chased to the uttermost limits of the habitable globe. Such were the chief points of the creed subscribed to by Sam's dog Rover.
It must be borne in mind, in this consideration, that the apes differ from the other tree-dwellers in being destitute of claws. The squirrels, the opossums, and other arboreal animals have sharp claws, by whose aid they can easily cling to the surface of the bark-covered boughs.
They pursue the ants that build their nests upon the high branches, as well as the wasps and bees; and to befit them for this life, they are furnished with naked prehensile tails, like the opossums and monkeys. These are characteristics entirely distinct from those of the Myrmecophaga jubata, or great ant-eater.
At ten miles we came to a small salt water stream, running seawards; in passing up it to look for a crossing place, Wylie caught two opossums, in the tops of some tea-trees, which grew on the banks.