I am very late to composting. For years, it was something that I considered doing but never quite got around to. There always seemed to be a reason. The kids were too young, so having one more thing to do in a day was overwhelming. The yard was small; where would I put it? What about the winter? Do we just skip it?

We bought a house on over an acre about 7 years ago, and by then the kids are teenagers. I was running out of reasons not to jump on the composting bandwagon. Yet still, I hesitated. We have three dogs, and they love to munch on the peels from cucumbers and the ends of carrots. I kept rationalizing that it really wouldn’t be that much, so why compost?

Each spring, we would head to the garden supply store and grab fertilizer. It did help our little seedlings sprout and grow. We would lovingly sprinkle some more on throughout the summer. My husband and I finally paused and said, this is why we should compose. Instead of throwing stuff away to go buy it (in a sense), we might as well make our own.

So, this year, we decided to start our compost pile. We picked a back edge of the property, figuring that it was out of the way of the dogs’ play area but convenient for collecting to spread in the garden. We began adding our organic materials and started waiting for the composting process to happen.

After a couple of weeks, it seemed like our compost pile was shrinking instead of growing. One evening, as my husband was depositing our daily scraps, he startled an animal. It scurried into the bushes before he could get a good look. He came back into the house, all excited. It seems that our pile was diminishing because something was snacking on it.

My husband instantly started speculating on what the creature could have been. We get many visits from foxes, squirrels, bears, and even a bobcat. He decided that what we really needed was a camera set up so that we could catch the culprit in the act.

The very next day, he excitedly mounted a trail camera to a nearby tree and made sure that it was at a good angle to capture the compost pile. It was now another waiting game, but this one did not take as long. The following morning, we logged into the app and were greeted with a variety of photos. My husband was hoping for a good picture of a fox or a deer, but what he got…an opossum. Night after night, we were greeted by images of an opossum snacking on our compost pile.

At first, my husband was disappointed, but then he started seeing the benefits of having Paul the opossum around. Opossums greatly help to keep other pests out of the yard and garden, including ticks! Living in the country, this is a huge help to us.

Since then, we have seen a deer, a fox, and a few other creatures on the trail camera, but we are so happy to see new images of Paul each morning. Our compost pile might not be growing, but it is helping our gardens in other ways. By keeping Paul around and happy, we are hoping to help keep other pests at bay!

How is your compost pile coming along? I would love to hear from you.