Opossum rescue

Here's a story that ran in our sister paper, The Daily News, about the efforts to rescue and rehabilitate an opposum that was shot in the head in Van Nuys.

According to the account by staff writer Dana Bartholomew, it all started when a call came in to the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services last Saturday reporting that an opossum had been shot in front of the caller's apartment complex.

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.

Rather than take the animal in for almost-certain euthanasia, Hartel took the wounded animal to Brenda Varvarigos, founder of Valley Wildlife Care in Woodland Hills.

Varvarigos, a mother of three, has rehabilitated some 920 injured birds and mammals picked up by animal control officers in just the last year.

Licensed by state and federal wildlife agencies, she nursed the animal's wounds and took the opossom in to Dr. Attila Molnar and Dr. kerry Milliken, a husband-and-wife team at Double R Veterinary center in Calabasas.

"Every aninmal has just as much right to exist. whether it's a small bird or a bald eagle or an opossum," said Molnar. "They should all get another chance."

And another chance is exactly what this opossum got, thanks to a network of people who cared enough to go the extra mile.

Varvarigos said it may cost her up to $700 in food and medicine before she can set him free.