The Virginia opossum is one of the most recorded mammals in Illinois’s atlas, with 2376 records spread across 85 counties. The heaviest share sits in Cook County, with Champaign, DuPage, and Will close behind, a map weighted toward the Chicago metro and the state’s larger towns, which suits an animal that has always lived well alongside people.
An omnivore at home from the metro to the swamps
North America’s only marsupial is a generalist with few demands. It eats fruit, insects, eggs, carrion, pet food, and whatever else the night offers, and it dens in hollow trees, brush piles, culverts, and the spaces under porches and sheds. That flexibility carries it from the wooded bluffs of Shawnee National Forest and the cypress swamps of Cache River State Natural Area in the far south to the lakefront dunes of Illinois Beach State Park, with every farm edge and backyard in between.
Out in every month, whatever the cold
Opossums do not hibernate. They den up through the worst cold snaps but stay active all winter, and their thin fur and bare ears and tail make that a costly strategy, frostbite being a common price of an Illinois January. Records appear in every month and crest in April, when the season turns and females are traveling with pouches full of young, a litter riding along on the mother’s back once they outgrow it.
Status in Illinois
NatureServe ranks the Virginia opossum S5, Secure, in Illinois, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
