In this early June photo, Dawn Bugni holds one of the rescued opossums.
Kellen Moore
Jun 29, 2009
SOURCE: Star-news
Two months and two days after four tiny opossums unexpectedly entered her life, Dawn Bugni released the creatures into the wild.
The opossum drop took place June 17 at a large farm in Bladen County, complete with a cypress pond and acres from the nearest road.
Although Bugni anticipated being a “blubbering idiot” when she released the one-pound opossums, that wasn’t the case.
“They looked so happy I didn’t cry,” Bugni said.
She and her husband, Gary Merkle, found the opossums outside their Atkinson home on April 15, when they were about the size of mice. The mother opossum was dead, probably a casualty of their dogs, Bugni said.
They nurtured the animals, who lived inside briefly before the stench became intolerable.
Strangely enough, that wasn’t Bugni’s first encounter with opossums.
She once turned her car around at the sign of a dead opossum and babies in the road. She removed one that was still in the mother’s pouch and drove with the two opossums in her lap to a wildlife rehabilitator.
But she had longer to bond with these four, making the release more emotional.
Other than during feedings, Bugni tried to give the opossums space while they were in her care. She didn’t handle them frequently. Still, there were worries about how the animals would react on their own for the first time.
But the opossums were eager to explore. The males filed out first, followed by the little girl, she said.
“Mother Nature just kicked back in,” Bugni said.
She left the youngsters in the woods with a feast of cat food and small carrots " not the big ones, they have to have the petite ones" and their cage for protection.
Bugni and Merkle returned to the woods the next day to collect the cage. She called for her former children, who used to respond to her voice. The opossums had left no trace.
“I really wanted to see them,” Bugni said. “But to me, this is success.”
