How to kill a possum with your bare hands

Yes indeed, how? How to kill a possum with your bare hands. And quickly, humanely. An opportunity to try it arose this week.

But first, the beginning. One of the marsupials featured on our front page on Wednesday. It was cute, but ill-fated. It was a prisoner of AgResearch, and so destined to be more guinea pig than possum.

I was subbing the story about it on the Tuesday night. "Poor possums," I said. "I feel sorry for them. It's not their fault they were introduced and did so well here."

I turned my computer screen to give my neighbour a look.

“Aw, look at that face. Do you think you could stare down the barrel of a gun at that and squeeze the trigger?”

Subeditor Claire made a "Hmm" sound indicating maybe. Subeditor Claire used to work in a shearing gang.

"I've shot possums," said subeditor Rory. He made a rifle gesture and sound.

I recollected looking through gun sights into a possum face many years ago in Westland, and not being able to pull the trigger.

"You coward," subeditor Rory said. "You are responsible for the deaths of native flora and fauna."

"I was 12 or 13 at the time," I protested. "I think I would have the fortitude to kill a possum today."

At which point the universe must have said, "Go on, then," because it presented me with a live one shortly after work.

We subeditors finish just shy of midnight, and then skulk off home to our lairs/the pub. On Tuesday night, I was skulking along a road hemmed by native vegetation, when a fighting pair of possums went bounding across it, hissing and carrying on.

The one giving chase was much bigger than the other, so that I thought the other might have been a cat. Preparing to rescue a cat, I crossed the street.

The larger possum made an attack on the smaller one, which then came hopping towards me. The larger possum, sensing human, climbed a tree.

The smaller possum seemed stunned. It was not bleeding but had lost a few tufts in the fight. Or perhaps I look like a headlight, I don't know. In any case, it just sat there at my feet for a bit, reminding me of a tabby I once loved.

"Preposterous," I thought. "Ridiculous and outrageous."

When you bluff about your will to kill possums, you just don't expect the universe to call your bluff.

The mental computer that runs ethical equations started to whir and hum.

I could have bent down, grabbed the thing by the tail, and given it a swing in the direction of a nearby power pole. But too much could go wrong with that: a quick and relatively painless death would be the expectation of the SPCA.

Attempting to break its neck, ditto. I'm not sure I even know how to break a neck.

Also, I wondered whether killing possums for the sake of the environment was plain hypocritical. On Earth, every year, the single species responsible for the most ecological destruction is surely Homo sapiens.

Then again, I oppose the use of 1080 poison and therefore should be committed to other methods of ridding New Zealand of possums. Using your bare hands would seem ideal: you have no unfair advantage and that is good and just.

This possum was also, potentially, fine food for an omnivore such as myself: free-range, no carbon kilometres, no plastic packaging, no water take required to produce it, et cetera. New Zealanders really should eat possums, if we are going to kill them at all.

These things and more confounded me as I stood over the possum.

Eventually, sensing human, it climbed a tree.