A poor little opossum was shot in Van Nuys. What kind of jerk would do this?
Luckily, they saved the guy. Here’s the story:
WOODLAND HILLS – It took two surgeons 3 1/2 hours to plug a 9 mm bullet hole through his head.
It may take another operation – or a total $9,000 worth of surgery – and months of intensive care to save him.
The victim: a Virginia opossum gunned down Saturday in Van Nuys.
“He’s really a lucky guy,” said Brenda Varvarigos, founder of Valley Wildlife Care in Woodland Hills, who is nursing the wounded critter. “I have a soft spot for opossums because people hate them, misunderstand them.
“Most people don’t realize that (we) would save an opossum.”
It took a village to save this one.
It was just after dark Saturday when a woman called the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services to report an opossum down in front of her apartment complex.
An adult male had a bloody hole in its head.
When West Valley shelter Officer G. Hartel arrived, she found the marsupial wrapped in blankets, defended by neighborhood children.
“Kids were standing around it; they thought I was going to harm it,” Hartel said.
Hartel, who has a penchant for diverting injured wildlife from almost-certain euthanasia, knew just where to take the wheezing animal.
At 10:30 p.m., she carried him to Varvarigos, a mother-of-three whose backyard rescue center rehabilitated 920 injured birds and mammals picked up by animal control officers last year….
Rebecca M Ford 