Online or by mail: Patrick Thomas White Committee • 81 Hawthorne St. • Lenox, MA 01240

The Possum and the Deer

by Patrick White

The trail cam photo below captures a possum eating ticks off a deer. Possums have voracious appetites and can eat up to 2,000 ticks a day. Deer are known to harbor many ticks, so much so that fawns have been known to die when infected with ticks in large numbers.

In this photo, the mighty deer bows to the possum, and the possum climbs up a rock to meet the deer. The possum gently removes the ticks it finds on the deer. Now possum and deer couldn’t be more different, and indeed their needs here, while different, are very much aligned. It takes a great deal of trust for the possum and the deer to work symbiotically to meet each other’s needs.

There's perhaps a lesson here for us all.