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How to Help Orphaned Virginia Opossums

Are you sure they’re a baby opossum?

Older baby Virginia opossums are easy to identify – they look like mini adult opossums. They have grey fur on their body and white fur on their face, while their ears, tail, and paws remain naked.

Virginia opossums are North America’s only marsupial, so newborn baby opossums, naked and blind, climb into their mother’s pouch on her abdomen where they remain attached to a nipple for 7-9 weeks. This means that it would be unusual to find a newborn baby opossum who is not inside the pouch of their mother.

Not sure the baby you’ve found is an opossum? Go back to our species selection page.

Get the Baby Opossum Contained

To keep the baby opossum safe while you figure out how to help them, put the opossum in a small cardboard box with a soft towel or t-shirt. Even when indoors, or on a warm day babies can get cold and even hypothermic, so give them a heat source:

  • a clean sock filled with dry, uncooked rice, and microwaved for one minute
  • a plastic bottle or jar with a tight-fitting lid from the recycling bin filled with hot tap water and wrapped in a tea towel or face cloth (secured to the box so that it does not squish the baby)
  • an electric heating pad set to “LOW” and placed under half of the box.
  • chemical hand warmers (e.g. Hot Paws) that stay warm for up to 8 hours

Do not give them any food or water – right now keeping them warm in a dark and quiet place is more important.

How Did You Find the Opossum?

  1. I found the opossum with no mother in sight [Click Here]
  2. I found baby opossums inside a dead mother’s pouch [Click Here]
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