BARRIE - A pair of Barrie roommates say they received a little something extra in their food delivery order the other night, as they faced a largely misunderstood creature staring out from the bag.
At around 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Amber Ballantyne, who lives on Bronte Crescent in the Letitia Heights neighbourhood, and her roommate found themselves locked in a heated stalemate with an angry freeloader inside the paper bag containing food on their doorstep.
“My roommate had just ordered (shawarma) ... off of the Uber Eats app. Once it got here, he went out to pick it up when he realized there was an opossum in the bag,” Ballantyne told BarrieToday.
Ballantyne was excited to see this “new friend,” which she knew she couldn’t keep as a pet.
“I decided to go outside with a towel and attempt to at least get the food away from him so he doesn't eat it and get sick,” Ballantyne added.
Her boyfriend joined her in an attempt to liberate the opossum from the bag.
“This little guy was so mad at us,” Ballantyne said.
The opossum held its mouth open, baring its teeth and hissing at them.
“I felt so bad,” she said.
Her boyfriend grabbed the bottom of the bag and attempted to "politely" let him and the food out.
“We at least wanted the food away from him,” Ballantyne said. “I decided to get a small bit of cat food to see if that would help. I promise you, he was not interested in anything but murder at that point.”
The pair soon had the mad marsupial out of the bag.
After going back inside their home, Ballantyne says she checked on their new friend a little later, finding it milling about nearby.
“Honestly, I was getting a little worried that he may need some help,” she said. “But when I went back outside for another check 10 minutes later, I noticed he was now at the side of the house.
"I could hear the other opossums, like one or two maybe, calling him. He waddled towards the calls and then he was gone. I'm hoping he joined his family,” Ballantyne added.
As for the bag of food which was manhandled by the opossum?
“I sent the photo to my roommate and he ended up getting a full refund for his food,” she said.
Typically, opossums in Ontario are at the northern edge of their North American range. They are Canada’s only native marsupial.
Opossums are easily adaptable and able occupy a variety of habitats, including farm fields, woodlands and settled areas, but their preferred habitat is forests associated with water such as swamps, streams and marshes.
Their diet consists of a wide variety of plants and small animals, but grasshoppers, crickets and beetles make up the bulk of their food.
But not shawarma.
