The cosy nestbox used by a dozen brushtail generations above the balcony outside our second-storey bedroom is peculiarly empty.

I'm puzzled by what we've done to put off these winsome, if not quite cuddly critters.

The cats haven't been allowed out at night for a decade because they can't be trusted to come back and not kill native birds and animals.

Could it be that Tessa, the little Jack Russell cross, sleeping in the backyard in her plastic villa under the balcony, has upset them? I doubt that, since Tessa is a ''nester'' who burrows under a few old rugs in her kennel, piling them high above her to keep warm on winter nights.

I've never heard her bark or growl after dark, which she would at strangers or unfamiliar marsupial visitors or fence-hopping foxes from the vast reserve behind our house. Not that she barks much anyway.

We never heard a sound from her for almost two years. Then I got a big surprise when she barked one evening as I pressed our new alarm bell at the front door.

Nah, gotta be something else.

What gets me is that in our front garden each day the droppings of possums galore litter the entrance path like a spilled jar of brown jellybeans.

Each night, ringtails and brushtails tight-walk the coiled powerlines to the house from electricity poles to gain access to blooming magnolia and flowering bottlebrush trees. They eat the buds, stunting the colourful growth. I've seen as many as six silhouetted in the streetlights, the little ringtails particularly dextrous as their prehensile tails and steel-grip limbs carry them scuttling across the

bundle-wrapped cables.

But possums aren't nesting out back anymore. The Redhead reckons this is because we stopped feeding them after becoming Possum Central, while neighbours stepped up their fruity offerings. Possums might find our buds and blooms tasty appetisers, but a plentiful supply of fresh fruit would obviously be a more attractive main course.

Every now and then, though, a bonsai plant is knocked off its courtyard rack, presumably by a possum. And occasionally, brushtail droppings are discovered on a courtyard table directly underneath the umbrella spread of a shade tree.

I refuse to take this personally, of course. But if possums no longer like our wooden nestbox, they can go live someplace else. See if I care!