Coyotes will not eat anything that they think might harm them. If the Opossum was well it would have been gone by now.

Yesterday, sorry I do not remember the site, I was reading that the use of high powered rat/mouse baits, warfarin, are believed to be causing deaths of other animals and birds up the food chain. The suggestion was that hawks, owls and other predator's were eating the rodents that had consumed the poison. Since the poison remained in the rodent it passed to the predator and so on down the line. The big question that remained unanswered was why were deer and other non-meat eaters being found with high amounts of the same chemical in their blood. My thought was the decaying bodies released the substance into the ground, which then went into the water systems. It could be possible that because your opossum eats anything it finds that it may have eaten animals that had died or were dying from the poison.

"Coyotes will not eat anything that they think might harm them. If the Opossum was well it would have been gone by now. "

Well...coyote and wolve existence depends on culling the weak and the lame. Opossum can be on their diet but part of "playing opossum" means giving off a foul odor and that may deter them, for now. If the coyotes get hungry enough, they'll eat it.

tj

The opposum came back the next day and looked much better, but then after a few days, it disappear entirely. May be the coyotes got him.

Paul