Opossum captured by Kona big-box store

Coming across a beast with a “head like a swine … tail like a rat … of the bigness of a cat,” as described by William Strachey in the early 1600s, in the middle of the night would, apparently, be a not-so-unsual event in Hawai‘i, but creepy nonetheless.

You might even stop and act as if you didn’t see anything until the creature, with its creepy beady eyes and snarling face full to teeth, moves along and you’re no longer freaked out.

Employees of a big-box store in Kona found themselves in pretty much that exact scenario this past weekend. They didn’t play possum though. Instead, they faced the beast head-on and captured it.

That creature was a 6-pound male opossum.

The Kona store contacted the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture at about 11 p.m. Jan. 4, and reported it trapped the native North American marsupial in an animal trap.

An agriculture inspector from the state Agriculture Department Plant Quarantine Branch in Kona retrieved the animal early Sunday morning and arranged for it to be transported to Honolulu.

It is unknow where the opossum came from, and it was humanely euthanized, which is a requirement for rabies testing.

This was the second opossum in as many months to be captured in the islands.

Another of the omnivores was trapped in mid-December 2024 by Plant Quarantine Branch inspectors at a big-box store in Iwilei, O‘ahu.

Several of the animals — which are non-native to Hawai‘i and less likely to carry rabies than other mammals, but are carriers of parasites and other diseases — have been captured through the years in the islands:

• August 2024: An opossum was captured at a Kalihi, O’ahu, freight company after workers saw it run into a shipping container.
• July 2024: An opossum was captured on a window ledge of an office building in downtown Honolulu.
• June 2016: An opossum was captured by workers offloading a cargo ship at Honolulu Harbor.
• July 2015: An opossum was captured in Kaka‘ako on O‘ahu, near the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Office on Ala Moana Boulevard, an area surrounded by arriving cargo.
• July 2012: An opossum was caught in an animal trap at a Sand Island warehouse on O‘ahu.
• August 2011: One was found in a shipping container as it was being unloaded in the Ward Centre area in Honolulu.
• 2005: Two opossums were found on O‘ahu — one captured inside a military cargo plane at Hickam Air Force Base and the other found in the mail receiving area of the U.S. Postal Service facility at Honolulu International Airport.

Opossums have diets that range from insects, bird eggs and rodents to fruits and vegetables.

They should not be confused with possums, which are also marsupials but native to Australia, New Guinea, Sulawesi, New Zealand and China and are closer related to kangaroos and other Australian marsupials.

Anyone spotting an illegal animal in Hawai‘i should call the statewide toll-free Pest Hotline at 808-643-PEST (7378).