Seeing 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 be not uncommon in Hawai’i, but creepy nonetheless.
You might even stop and pretend you didn’t notice anything until the creature, with its creepy beady eyes and snarling face full of teeth, moves on and you’re no longer terrified.
Employees at a big-box store in Kona found themselves in a similar situation this weekend. They didn’t play possum, though. Instead, they confronted the beast head on and captured it.
The creature was a 6-pound male opossum.
At approximately 11 p.m. on January 4, the Kona store contacted the Hawai’i Department of Agriculture to report that it had trapped the native North American marsupial in an animal trap.
An agriculture inspector from the state Agriculture Department’s Plant Quarantine Branch in Kona retrieved the animal early Sunday morning and arranged for its transportation to Honolulu.
The opossum’s origin is unknown, but it was euthanized humanely as part of the rabies testing procedure.
This was the second opossum captured in as many months on the islands.
Another omnivore was apprehended in mid-December 2024 by Plant Quarantine Branch inspectors at a big-box supermarket in Iwilei, O’ahu.
Several of the creatures, which are non-native to Hawai’i and less likely to spread rabies than other mammals, but are carriers of parasites and other diseases, have been captured on the islands over the years.
- 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 eat a variety of foods, including insects, bird eggs, rodents, fruits, and vegetables.
They should not be confused with possums, which are marsupials endemic to Australia, New Guinea, Sulawesi, New Zealand, and China, and are more closely related to kangaroos and other Australian marsupials.
Anyone spotting an illegal animal in Hawaii should contact the statewide Pest Hotline at 808-643-PEST (7378).