It’s normal to purchase a fake tree to celebrate the holidays. Personally, I am glad to avoid the hassle of finding a live tree each year, and having just one that I reuse. Also, I assumed that fake trees meant not dealing with live animals that make their home in that tree.
How wrong I was! Texas resident Brett Ingram said she sat down on her couch after a long day at work. She had planned to have a nice, quiet evening. Then she looked at her artificial Christmas tree – and saw the opossum head poking out of it!
She shared this story on TikTok, where it quickly went viral. “I am literally freaking out right now,” Ingram said in the video, showing the opossum watching her from its spot on a branch. “I have no idea how this possum got in my house and up into my tree, and I’m trying to get him out, but he won’t let me.” The video has more than 4.9 million views.
@brettbratt359I don’t understand how this thing is in my house right now.♬ original sound – Brett
Her first clue that something was in her house, Ingram said, was the faint sneeze she heard from behind her. “I do have a lot of animals. So I thought it was one of mine,” she explained. Ingram has three rescue dogs, a cat, two pythons and a bearded dragon.
“I looked over, kind of just still sitting (on the couch). I looked over, and kind of leaned up to look under the tree. And I didn’t see anything. So I was like, ‘Well, maybe I’m just hearing stuff.’” Ignoring it, she went back to working on her laptop – then heard a second sneeze.
“So then I stood up because I was like, ‘OK, something’s over here,’” she said. “My first initial thought was, ‘Is there like a kitten over here or like a rat or something? There’s something over there.’ So I started looking around and then when I looked to my left, where the tree was, I saw a really long, fat, naked tail. I stopped and I looked up and saw a very large, full-grown possum.”
The sneaky opossum. Photo courtesy of Ingram
Ingram said her first emotion was pure shock, not worry, at her new ‘friend’ in the tree. “I am an animal lover so it was more of kind of an excitement … before that video tried to get him out,” she said.
Her first attempt to remove him (while wearing rubber gloves, of course) was to help him make his way out of the tree. “I tried to pull him a little bit, but he just wasn’t having it. So then I took my phone out after and went back around and started videoing him from the front,” she said.
Eventually, the opossum – which is the size of her cat, Ingram said – was pulled out of the tree. She said both her and the opossum came out of the incident unscathed. “He put up a fight and held on to the branches with his little hands, and it was big and strong, and it tested me for a little while,” Ingram said. “He flopped out.”
He was trying to get away from me and ran under my couches back and forth multiple times.”
The sneaky opossum seemed fine, Ingram said, so she gave him a little lecture on self-care. “I told him how bad he smelled,” she said, noting that he must have secreted a defense smell during their tussle. “He smelled very bad. We did have a talk about that, and then I put him outside on his merry way, and it was the end of the possum story.”
As for how the feisty animal made his way in, Ingram’s theory that the opossum snuck in when she let one of her pets outside. Being the animal lover she is, “I probably would have kept it if it didn’t smell so horrid,” she said, smiling. Watch below for a look at this hilarious adventure with a sneaky opossum!
