The high-water mark in my share-accommodation life came the day one of my flat-mates gave me permission to trash her room. That kind of opportunity didn't happen every day. The thing is, we were supposed to catch a possum in there. But we couldn't find it.

This Striped Marsh Frog is difficult to see against the leaf litter

We used to get a lot of visits from a cat which belonged to someone nearby. It would wander inside and treat our place like its own. One night, my flat-mate woke up in the middle of the night to find herself patting that cat on her pillow. Its fur was thick and, well, kind of a bit too thick... Which was when she realised it wasn't the cat.

This Starfish could be mistaken for part of the rock

Apparently she freaked out quite a bit and turned on the bed-side light and there was a really big brush-tailed possum on her pillow, no doubt wondering what all the fuss was about. Flat-mate jumped out of bed and the possum jumped too. But where that possum jumped we will never know.

This butterfly's wings have a pattern very similar to a leaf, including the simulation of leaf veins and the appearance of dried-up edges

That morning, my flat-mate was in a mad rush to get to work on time. You see, she'd slept in because for much of the night she hadn't slept all that well. Something to do with being nervous about a possum. But on the way out the door she asked me if I could do her a little favour - to catch that critter in her room and take it outside.

Stick insects are one of the most impressive camouflage artists

So it ended up being me and my other flat-mate (and word spread fast so two of our neighbours ended up in there too) tearing her place apart, pulling clothes out of her wardrobe, looking under her bed, messing her place up, and all with full permission. It doesn't get much better than that when you share a house.

This tiny spider matches the colouring of the vine beautifully

Yet with four people spending at least twenty minutes going through her room we didn't find any wildlife. We wrote off her possum-story as a moment of mid-slumber delusion and I personally didn't think anything more of it until that following evening when I thought I was alone in the house but heard little footsteps coming down the corridor. I was surprised to see a large brush-tailed possum appear from the direction of my flat-mate's room. It paused mid-step and looked at me in a kind of bemused way. Then it took off to its tree via the balcony. That possum must have been in the room the whole time we were looking.