Yah, ya need Armadilla Helper for those. But it tastes just fahn bah itself.
While staying in a small town in New Zealand, I was amused to find a local hippy cafe organising a (savoury) pie making contest- the three categories of pie were: ‘vegetarian’, ‘vegan’, and ‘possum’.
There’s not much of a market for the meat though, especially seeing as you’d have to be pretty careful to make sure you didn’t get a poisoned one in some areas; said hippy cafe was supplying the pie possums for the competition, and had a big warning label regarding not catching your own for eatin’ for this reason.
My niece just flew into Auckland yesterday. I wonder if she got to see or hear this? After nearly a full day in airports and on planes, she was probably dead asleep by then, but being a spunky 12-year-old, she may have still been up with some of the other kids on her student exchange trip. Alas, we won’t know until she gets back in six weeks, since they weren’t allowed to bring their phones. Unless her host family lets her use their computer, but she won’t be with them for other week or two.
Reminds me of a couple of friends who spent the night at Paradise Lodge on Mount Rainier. In the evening, they went out with a group of other guests and a guide to view the night skies from the meadows nearby. Suddenly a bright meteor streaked overhead. The awestruck silence was broken by a boy exclaiming, “Holy sh**! Did you see that!”
The outback? It’s in New Zealand, not Australia.
Kiwi here, and setting some possum tails straight 
Possums (brushtail possums) are an australian import, and are a pest here in NZ. While there is reasonable eating on a possum, possums are a reservoir of bovine TB. Additionally, there are often poison drops (1080) and trappers use cyanide. So food safety can be an issue.
Possum can be skinned for fur, which is wonderful, and ethical (they are a noxious pest). The plucked fur (the aforementioned possum plucker) can also be incorporated into a wool, generally with merino sheep wool, and sometimes with silk as well. The garments made with this sort of wool are fabulously light and warm and wonderful (but expensive). My possum/merino gloves and hat are my absolute favourite winterwear.
Oh, and my cat loves his possum tail toy …
I’m not a possum plucker, I’m a possum plucker’s friend
I’m only plucking possums as a means unto an end !
I saw it; I thought it was a lightning flash at first, a bright blue-white, but travelling North-South and fairly low over the horizon and it lingered a shade longer than it ought to have, then there was a muted rumble. It was pretty damned impressive, certainly the biggest I’ve seen, and there’s some good dash cam footage out.
According to my in-laws possums are edible. Just sayin’
Sure, we nudged him with our foot and he didn’t even move!
I’d say we had a pretty good example two years ago of one in a populated area within a nuclear armed nation. Energy release on that one is supposed to be around 500 kT, which is in the ballpark of most Russian RVs
I said at the time that the dashcam footage was extremely chilling, as it looked all the world to me like an ICBM RV streaking to airburst. (Yes, it was going 4x as fast as an RV. Radar could tell that, but I certainly wouldn’t have been able to by eyeball.)
As for the NZ guys? Hard to say how far or near the fireball came to them. How do you judge distance to something like that at night?
I think their seeming more often is a function of more cameras around and a more connected world. They always were falling but for almost all of history is a was a local story and only if someone happened to see it.
Okay, it’s the Way Out Back. 
(Sorry, I worked with an Aussie/Enzedd company for several years and I know and should know the difference.)
Ca. 1985:
Hotshot Sydneyite (Who Married the Pretty Kiwi and Ran the NZ Operation for a Time): Yah, we lived on North Island for a time.
Me: Wow, New Zealand. I hear it’s really beautiful.
HS: Yah… if you loike SHEEP!
No, two possum trappers on a jaunt to pick up a bizarre backwoods piece of equipment seeing a bright streak in the sky is the opening lines of most of the UFO stories in the record.
It’s just that with dashcams and cell cameras, brief impressions can’t get embellished into detailed flying saucers with windows and ray guns. And then into lost hours and abductions and funny spots on their abdomens and sore butts.