photo by: Courtesy of Prairie Park Nature Center

For Prairie Park Nature Center's Opossum Grams program, Teacup the opossum will soon be visiting people around Lawrence with holiday greetings.

If the holiday stress is getting to you, you might take a cue from Teacup the opossum, Prairie Park Nature Center’s mellow marsupial.

During the December holidays and around Valentine’s Day, she travels around town with the Nature Center’s staff for the Opossum Grams program, which is taking orders now for the holiday season. She delivers greetings to families and businesses, staying cool and collected all the way.

Sometimes she sleeps in her crate and lets people pet her, said Nature Center supervisor Dara Wilson. Sometimes she’s a bit more active. But there’s always “no stress level” with her.

“Some animals you can tell it’s a little stressful to get in a crate and go somewhere,” Wilson said. “Teacup, she just walks in there and takes her little snack and just gets comfortable.”

And, no, before you ask, she’s not playing dead – she doesn’t really know how.

photo by: Courtesy of Prairie Park Nature Center

Teacup, Prairie Park Nature Center’s opossum, gets in the holiday spirit.

Teacup is a Virginia opossum, the variety that’s native to Kansas and much of North America, Wilson said. Like kangaroos and other marsupials, they’re born very small and normally mature in their mother’s pouch. In the spring of 2024, Wilson said, a woman brought Teacup to the nature center, knowing she was too tiny to be on her own.

“She was smaller than a tennis ball,” Wilson said. “A little bit bigger than a ping-pong ball.”

When she was brought in, the nature center was holding a “tea party with the animals” program, and the visitor who brought her set her in one of the cups. “And that’s how she got the name Teacup, because she fit in one of these tiny little teacups,” Wilson said.

A wildlife rehabilitator helped Teacup grow, but she couldn’t be released back into the wild after that. She wasn’t afraid of humans, and she didn’t show her teeth or pass out like opossums normally do when frightened.

“She didn’t show any of that behavior, so she probably would have got plucked from the wild pretty quickly if she was released,” Wilson said. “So she came back here and became our education opossum.”

Teacup isn’t a pet – and Wilson stressed that people shouldn’t be keeping opossums as pets – but you might notice some similarities between her and a cat.

Younger opossums who are used to humans might see them as “an obstacle” for climbing and associate them with food and snacks, Wilson said. “They recognize us and don’t have fear, but they don’t need to play with us.” But opossums also age quickly and normally only live about four or five years, and Teacup is in a more laid-back stage of her life right now.

“As soon as they get past nine months and they’re not roaming around as much, because that’s when they reach adulthood, they’re kind of like a sleepy older cat,” Wilson said.

The Opossum Gram program started out before Teacup came to the nature center; at first it was an opossum named Phoebe who did the visits. It began as a Valentine’s Day program to bring the center’s offerings to people where they are, Wilson said. She’d worked in flower shops before, and thought, “Well, people like flowers at Valentine’s Day, why won’t they like an opossum?”

“That was just completely experimental,” Wilson said. When they opened signups for the first round of visits, she said, “we kind of figured no one would sign up for it.”

But it turned out to be a surprise hit. The first Valentine’s Day program was fully booked in a few days, she said. The Holiday Opossum Grams don’t normally go as fast as the Valentine’s Day ones, just because there’s so much else going on.

But why opossums specifically? Wilson said the reason was that they’re comparatively easy to take on trips – especially during the winter, which isn’t ideal for cold-blooded critters like the center’s snakes.

“She’s just the easiest one to work with to take off site,” Wilson said.

People book her for family or work events – though the nature center doesn’t do bookings at schools or on the University of Kansas campus. And usually, Wilson said, they book her for someone “because that person loves opossums.”

Sometimes, though, “there’s people who don’t love opossums who are getting an Opossum Gram.” While Teacup and the nature center can’t force anyone to change their minds, people usually warm up soon enough.

“They kind of come around, and they’re interested, and they’re like, ‘oh my gosh, this is actually really cool,'” Wilson said.

“Those are the most interesting ones, because you’re not sure how this is going to go, but someone ordered this for you…” she said. “You don’t know if it’s a gag gift or not. We try to make it so that it’s not a gag gift.”

Of course, many are really into it from the moment Teacup shows up, Wilson said. She remembers one Opossum Gram that was arranged as a surprise. The recipient loved opossums, she said, “his friend knew he loved opossums, and he was just so happy to see a real live opossum.”

“It was an emotional experience – it made us emotional,” she said. “It was just really heartwarming to see someone’s dream come true, to interact up close with an opossum.”

An Opossum Gram visit costs $80 and includes not just an up-close encounter with Teacup, but also chocolates, a personalized card and a stuffed opossum toy. You can see available dates and times and sign up for one online at bit.ly/HolidayOpossumGram.

photo by: Courtesy of Prairie Park Nature Center

Teacup, Prairie Park Nature Center’s “education opossum.”