note you SHOULDN'T pick up random wild animals, especially ones in the middle of a fear response, but if you really feel like getting a rabies shot today the ER might ask to see the bite mark first).
The good news there, I guess, is that rabies is pretty rare among 'possums, as opposed to things like raccoons:
External Quote:
Do Opossums Carry Rabies?
Any mammal can get rabies, but it's extremely rare for an opossum. It's believed that their low body temperature may inhibit the virus and make it difficult for it to survive. While there are a few reports each year where opossums do carry rabies, cases in wildlife such as bats, raccoons, skunks and foxes are more prevalent.
However:
External Quote:
Do Opossums Carry Diseases?
Though it's unlikely for them to transmit rabies, opossums can sometimes carry harmful germs and pathogens that cause diseases such as leptospirosis. Transmitted through contaminated urine or other bodily fluids from an infected animal, this bacterial disease can impact humans and wildlife. Raccoons, skunks, deer, squirrels and rodents can all be infected without any true signs.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some people who contract leptospirosis may not have symptoms, but others could have nonspecific flu-like symptoms that usually resolve without medical treatment. Sometimes, however, symptoms reappear and can lead to more severe diseases. To prevent the spread of leptospirosis from wildlife, avoid swallowing water from lakes, rivers or swamps, and steer clear of environments potentially contaminated with animal urine.
Source: https://www.terminix.com/wildlife/opossums/learn-about/
For what it is worth, as a young fellow in the rural south, I have picked up a 'possum or two by the tail. NOT while in the tonic immobility (they really do look very dead, and you can't impress the other kids by catching a dead possum), but while they were walking about. This does not, in my limited bit of experience, produce "playing dead" or panic, they just sort of hung there patiently until put down. I've only done so once as an adult, just to get one of them off the back porch so my freaked-out cat would come back in. Carried him down to the grass, and he trundled off, and still hangs around to find any scraps that the raccoons pull out of the trash bins.
Probably would have been smarter to leave him be, but he doesn't seem to hold a grudge.
I would NEVER EVER EVER attempt that with a raccoon. Those "trash pandas" are an order of magnitude cuter than a 'possum, but react much more violently to being approached. ( I had to live trap and relocate some that started coming into my late mother-in-law's house through the cat door, and eating her heart pills. Caught a "by catch" possum as well, he just sat in the rap until I let him out. The raccoons were quite nasty about it, lots of growling and trying to get at me through the mesh of the trap, but I carefully brought them here and released them unhurt and they all live in the woods and by the creek along my back yard now, far away from an old lady and her heart pills, aka raccoon treats, and they or their descendants are the ones in the trash from time to time, and scattering scraps for ol' Mr. Poss.
Unlike my mother-in-law, we have a cat door that can be firmly closed at night, keeping kitty in and raccoons and possums and "visiting fireman" cats from around the neighborhood from coming in.
