One of Nature's Mysteries: Solved!

Mystery: 

My last post on this blog mentioned a mystery of nature that I had observed under my bird feeders.  And several other bloggers had mentioned seeing the same thing.  We found "pellets" of sunflower seed hulls under the feeder in the morning.  Finally, after more observation, the mystery is solved:

Mystery Solved:

A week or so ago, my husband and I saw an opossum under our feeder. It was clearly chewing sunflower seeds.  It would take a mouthful and chew and chew, then open its mouth and spit.  This action reminded me of baseball players that chew sunflower seeds, move them around in the mouth to get the meat out, and spit out the hulls.


We watched as the possum slowly moved on...looking for food elsewhere I imagine, after a hard winter.

So the pellets we saw were not regurgitated because they never left the mouth to enter the digestive system.  And they are held together by the saliva of the animal. 

I am still amazed that this behavior is not documented in any reference book.  It just shows that we don't know everything about even the commonest animals.

I was glad that, through continued observation, we could solve this mystery.