I just saw the snake crawl under the lotus tub.
I shall start a opossum sanctuary. The are admired by many, including the SPCAES.
It’s been my experience that they do not die easily. I’ve dispatched a couple that had been massively injured by cars but wouldn’t give it up. If you’re going to kill them, be prepared.
I’m siding with the possums here. My first question would be, Indygrrl, how are they tearing up his yard ?Possums don’t tear up or dig at things normally, but they do get into trashcans and pet food left out. Both those attractions can easily be solved.
Possums, like vultures, are the critters so often misunderstood, but they really serve a great natural niche as fine garbage collectors. They move around and clean up nature’s detritus. I got to know them better while doing wildlife rehab work, and came to admire their lil selves. They are all bluster when first confronted, but, as the Wiki entry sez:
Ya gotta admire that technique. Sometimes I wish I could do that at work. Really, it’s an amazing adaptation. Doesn’t work too well with Highways, though.
And, possums are not disease vectors, as said above. They are the only marsupial we have in N. America.
Relocating a possum is not as harmful as relocating other mammals. They are wanderers (that baby on the back technique would clue into that), so, would do just fine relocated to another bigger area.
Here is a site that says a bit more about possums. It’s pretty much what I’ve observed working with them in wildlife rehabilitation. I had no idea they were such great critters when I started, but have really come to appreciate them.
Hope this helps everyone else glimpse a bit into their lives and appreciate them too.
My standard Opossum joke isn’t nearly as funny if it is indeed involuntary.
'Possum walks up to the edge of a country road. Looks to the right.
“Lots of cars coming that away.”
Looks to the left. “Lotta cars coming that way, too…I think I’ll try it!”
Ambles out onto the road. “Uh oh, a Mack truck! Whatever shall I do? I know! I’ll play dead!”
I can’t truly know what goes on in the Po’ possum mind, but might be
more like this:
“Play dead, yep, yep… Oh Fuck, That’s a Big Ass Predat…”
I may have been a tad anthropocentric. You’re version certainly works better with my seeing marsupials playing in the street just as I hit the rise before the turn on the way home. 
Best luck I had with getting rid of possums without killing them (and I have had the problem) was with- and anyone from rural south Alabama or south Georgia can probably attest that I’m not making this up- coyote urine. It’s available at most farmer co-ops or online (usually powdered concentrate- mix with water and spread around your property). It stinks when you mix it of course, but after its diluted and spread around you don’t smell it, but animals (whose sense of smell is hundreds of times ours) do and coyotes and other predators will keep possums/armadilloes/some other animals away. It doesn’t work well on rabbits or squirrels so much [which is fine with the latter- I like squirrels and rabbits don’t bother me] and of course The Luftwaffe in a Bottle isn’t going to keep away rats and mice (they have to be killed).
Killing possums:
Caveat: Most possums that you’ll actually encounter are not endangered, but to be on the safe side you might want to look at the net first to make sure you’re not shooting at one that is. There are MAJOR fines if you kill an endangered one as one of my hillbilly cousins found out a few years ago.
That said I have no problem with killing the little marsupial bastards so long as you do it as humanely as possible (quick and painless- unlike rats who you can subject them to skin grafting experiments for all I care) but the problem is that there’s no poison that just kills possums. Possums LOVE watermelon, but poison it and even if you hang it in a tree to keep it away from dogs and other animals you’ve just killed squirrels, and birds as well, who will eat almost anything a possum will eat. (The bright side is it also kills raccoons- sounds mean, but killing wild coons who won’t leave your property when you’re in the country is almost always a good idea; I know they look cute and cuddly but in addition to being the Delta Airlines of rabies they can fook up a dog or cat 6 ways to Sunday; I’ve even known them to attack cattle, though why I’ve no idea [they are meat eaters but not cattle].)
That said- the best way to kill them without killing other wildlife is, unfortunately and simply, with a gun. (Lest anyone think it’s cruel to do so, possums can reproduce for nine generations using nothing but email and when the population gets too high they starve to death; bullets are more humane.)
I’m of the “don’t kill anything that doesn’t absolutely need killing” way of thinking. If your friend agrees, then the only advice I can give is to make sure he takes that sucker far, far away.
The reason my possum adventure had so many chapters was because I kept dropping the little critter off right down the street, and it didn’t end until I drove him several miles out of town.
If I went to the trouble of catching a possum in a trap in my backyard, I’d call local Animal Control to deal with it. That’s why they get the big bucks. 
I had one of the little buggers get into my house a few years ago when I was living in Tuscaloosa AL (a city of about 100,000- though admittedly my apartment complex was between a cemetery and a golf course). Scared the hell out of me as first I thought it was a cat, then thought “it’s a cat that’s been exposed to massive amounts of plutonium” or “no, it’s a demon… o…possum”. DROVE MY DOG FRIGGING BALLLLLLLISTIC and took me forever to get it out of the house (my postage stamp back yard was fenced so I had to corner it, get it into a garbage can (“It Puts the Coyote Urine On Its Skin Or Else It Gets the Terrier Again”) and quickly ran it to the front door, having to back kick my dog like I’m a mule to keep him from attacking and getting his little butt whipped (he thinks he can fight- he can’t) and into the parking lot, where I dropped the pissed off thing onto the ground- and it immediately proceeded to race me back to the house! I won though.
My dog was meanwhile absolutely possessed and must have barked while flying around the room for the next 8 hours. That apartment had an exposed attic access above the laundry room and a tree just outside, and I think it went from tree into attic somehow and then literally fell onto my washer (which is when I heard it) and from there to the floor. I also had a bat in that apartment once- looked like Dr. Moreau’s gerbil.
Though I’m not generally opposed to the killing of critters when there’s a reason for it, I’m siding with the 'possum here, too. We had a yard possum for years who we called Larry. He’d shuffle along the top rail of the board fence and peek out at us from behind trees while we were sitting out on the porch having a smoke.
Unless they’re doing real damage to my house or property, I feel as though wildlife has every right to the property and more.
I enjoy hunting, and will even slaughter my own food animals to boot, but I still won’t randomly kill wildlife just because they exist in the same space as me. You said they’re tearing up the yard and causing messes–that surprises me, as you’d expect that more from a 'coon. Maybe he’s got other critters he doesn’t know about?
We rescued a baby I found wandering in the yard. I walked over to it and it flopped over. We kept him in a very large plastic box with a lid and many holes drilled in it. He crawled out of a hole 1/4 his size and proceeded to terrorize the cat and Mrs.Plant who both believed it to be a rat with leprosy. I cornered him in the bookcase; well, Nadia the cat pointed him out “A rat! A rat! A gawdam rat!”. We took him to an animal relocater who took him to a state park when he was old enough. G-d help me, I named him “Ike” after the baby on Southpark. :rolleyes:
But they’re so cute! I had one that I kinda-sorta adopted (they’re too scared of humans to really be pets per se, but I set out rice for her in the backyard) at a house I lived in a couple years back. They can’t give you any diseases and they protect your yard against much nastier things. It seems odd to me that possums are “tearing up” your friend’s yard, since I had a possum hang out in my yard every night and never noticed a problem. Of course, she was pregnant, so that might have had something to do with it. Or not. Who knows?
Yeah, they’re just so goddamned squeeable, yup.
Well, maybe a baby possum is cuter? Yeah, still not getting any better, far’s I can see.
You can have 'em–they give me the heebie jeebies.
We have a whole darn thread on possums, including Silver Tyger Girl saying she was bit by one, yet it takes almost a full page of replies before someone makes The Simpsons reference?
Marge: There’s a family of possums living in here!
Homer: I call the big one ‘bitey.’
I’m ashamed to even know you people. 
Opossums are one of those creatures that I hope will live forever…so long as they’re far away from me. Cute when they’re little, maybe, but so were the gremlins. I was driving home very late one night when I saw a pregnant one cross the road. Apparently she was carrying about 32 of them in her belly. Gah! I say catch and release them. In Hawaii.
Aww, come on, now. That little guy is pretty damn awesome. Hell, they even make dogs with faces kinda like that.*
*Possum is cuter.
This just in: 'possums are not smart.
NajaHusband’s grandfather, as a kid, kept all kinds of random critters around. Evidently he would take it fishing with him, and feed it the fish livers as he cleaned the fish. One day he and some friends were catching a whole bunch of fish. NHGF figured any animal will regulate itself for food, and they just kept tossing it the guts. The possum kept "NOM NOM NOM"ing on fish livers and gorged himself to the point that “he just bust 'is guts”–that’s a direct quote.
Also, NajaHusband’s family had one take up residence in the garage in the wintertime. Apparently it had no compunctions about pooing all over the damn place.
OK, I was not previously of the opinion that Opossums are cute, but I am now. That fourth link is adorable. Sorry.