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Opossum Lady saves an unpopular species Photo by Jim Craven Charlie Herring holds a baby opossum she rescued. By her own count, Herring has rehabilitated and released more than 2,000 of the nonnative marsupials. Central Point woman's crusade wins her few friends By MARK FREEMAN CENTRAL POINT -- Charlie Herring always keeps one eye on the road, scanning the pavement for the latest in from the bumper crop of car-accident victims for which few shed any tears. Herring stops at the sight of dead opossums laying in any roadway, then picks through the dead mammals' pouches in search of infant survivors. Any living babies -- or "pinkies" as she calls them -- are taken home to be fed, fixed and ferried around by Herring in a special pouch wherever she goes. "Very few people are sympathetic to them," says Herring, 49. "Most people think they're vermin. "These little fellas need my help," Herring says. "They need a break." This crusade has made Herring Central Point's Opossum Lady. In the past decade, she estimates that she has rehabilitated and released more than 2,000 opossums. Most have been released on the lands of sympathetic ranchers, but some have been set free on out-of-the-way public lands. Opossums have few friends like Herring. They are nonnative animals that feed on native wildlife and can carry diseases that can be passed on to Oregon's resident critters as well as horses. To the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the only good opossum is a dead one. "Obviously, she feels strongly that this is appropriate," says Larry Cooper, who coordinates the ODFW's exotic species program. "But for the nonnative individuals she saves, other native species probably suffer for it. "We do not put nonnative species ahead of native species," he says. Moreover, Herring may be running afoul of state laws because she has no state license to rehabilitate opossums and cannot legally release any without consulting state wildlife officials. "If she's doing that, she ought to stop," says ODFW nongame biologist Simon Wray in Central Point. "She's got to stop. Or she's gonna get busted." Herring has run afoul of the law for other wildlife-related projects. She was cited in 1994 after Oregon State Police found two young coyotes, a bear cub and a turkey vulture in a Central Point pet shop she operated under the name of Two Pole Pumpkin Pets. Oregon law forbids keeping a coyote except in zoos, and she did not have the required state permits to keep the bear or the turkey vulture. Herring believes a federal license for her ferret-rearing business covers her opossum activities. Cooper and Wray disagree. "She's got some issues," Cooper says, "that probably need to be resolved." Herring has resolved that her opossum crusade should not end over some legal technicalities. She says someone needs to stand up for an animal whose main defense tactic in the face of adversity is to play dead. "Most people don't think I'm doing anything right," she says. "But it's not (the opossums') fault they're here. It's just not right to kill them on purpose." Oregonians have been killing opossums since the 1930s, when they were first illegally introduced in the Willamette Valley for use as pets, pelts and food. These nocturnal cousins of Australian kangaroos and wombats have since spread across the state, where they eat virtually everything and breed voraciously. Herring says few of the people who look down on opossums realize that many of the creatures that get run over by motorists may be carrying tiny babies that slowly starve in their pouch. "Most of the people hit them on purpose to get rid of them," Herring says. "But how many days does it take their babies to die? I just don't think that's fair to them." Herring has been hooked on saving them ever since the late Dave Siddon, who founded Wildlife Images Rehabilitation Center in Merlin, gave her an opossum to rehabilitate 10 years ago. She recovers many of the baby opossums from the pouches of dead opossums. Others are brought to her ferret-rearing facility on Gebhard Road near Central Point. She has taken in infants as small as an inch long. She feeds and nurtures them until they reach a weight of three pounds, and then releases them -- mostly on farms and ranches where the owners express an interest in them. So far this year, she has raised and released 208 opossums -- including 15 on a private ranch last week near Mount McLoughlin. At roughly 200 a year, that puts her total easily at 2,000, she says. "Two thousand of the things? Good grief," Cooper says. "That's going to be significant." Cooper says every extra opossum means fewer quail eggs, native mice and other animals that Oregon law protects. Opossums, as unprotected exotics, are viewed as aliens whose presence is unwanted. "I'd like to see opossums not rehabilitated, personally," says biologist Wray. "Nothing against them. They're just trying to survive. But their survival threatens native species, which we should be more concerned about." Herring scoffs at Wray's attitude, and insists most of the opossums she saves do not significantly add to their overall population. While Wray says opossums likely carry diseases, Herring sees them as exceptionally clean animals that even make great pets. Moreover, she says, they deserve as much respect as Canada geese, Rio Grande turkeys and other nonnative wildlife cultivated here for hunters. In the meantime, the Opossum Lady plans to continue her maternal crusade for these orphaned animals. "Only a mother," Herring says, "could love that face." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA