Vera Cusimaro, left, and Vivien Deal-Sosa present before an administrative committee at the state capitol building in Concord in January. The two students, who were fifth graders at Chesterfield School at the time, advocated for making the Virginia opossum the official state marsupial.
When a Virginia opossum made its home in the Deal-Sosa family garage while looking for food and shelter, Vivien Deal-Sosa — a then-fourth grader at Chesterfield School — decided to learn a bit about the uninvited guest. So she made it the subject of a class project.
Her interest led to a petition by her class to make the Virginia opossum a New Hampshire state symbol, which was recently codified into law with some help from Vivien’s classmates, teacher and local representative.
Jessica Quarry, Vivien’s teacher, said that she has her students research and present on a mammal from New Hampshire as part of her curriculum.
Vivien was the first student in Quarry’s 10 years of teaching to choose the Virginia opossum for the project. The most popular picks are red and gray foxes, black bears, river otters, squirrels, and raccoons. Yet Vivien approached the topic with an energy that spread to her classmates.
“Vivien is very mature, and a calm and even-keeled student in person. Also, she’s very objective and fair. When her classmates think of her, they think of her getting along with everyone, but also having a calm demeanor. When she is interested in something, she dives deep,” Quarry said. “She has this natural, quiet leadership quality to her.”
Vivien’s confident voice made her presentation stand out to the class. The subject matter also helped. While many adults may see opossums as pests, they also might be a little cute.
Virginia opossums are about the size of a house cat at approximately 28-30 inches including the tail, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. White heads peer out from their dark gray coats, with round black ears and a pink nose on the tips of their snouts.
They also captured Vivien’s imagination as the only marsupials native to North America. Their fur-lined pouches provide warmth and protection to their newborns. Baby opossums are born blind, and they stay in their mother’s pouch for their first two months of life. A female opossum carries an average of eight pouch young.
As Vivien and her peers learned more and more about Virginia opossums, they became something of a class mascot, Quarry said.
Another part of the fourth-grade curriculum was state government. The class learned New Hampshire has many animals designated as state symbols. They found out that they have a state bird, a state dog, a state butterfly, even a state amphibian — so, why not a state marsupial?
Soon enough, the class began circulating a petition to make the Virginia opossum the state marsupial. It garnered 100 signatures from students, their parents, and teachers.
“My best friend, Vera (Cusimano), helped make the petition. A bunch of my friends helped sign it, and Ms. Quarry was very supportive,” Vivien said.
Eventually, the class got to share the petition with the state senator representing their district. Sen. Donovan Fenton, a Keene Democrat, was invited to Chesterfield School after Courtney Deal, Vivien’s mother, got in touch with him through a work friend.
“I work for Dartmouth Health Department, so when Vivien was really interested in this opossum idea, I reached out to a friend through work who works in government relations. So, I reached out to her and asked, ‘What can I advise Vivien do to get this started?'” Courtney Deal said.
A year after Vivien made her presentation, the Chesterfield School class — now fifth graders — joined Fenton in Concord to present the bill before the Executive Departments and Administration Committee at a January 2025 meeting.
After Fenton introduced the bill, Vivien and her best friend, Vera, stepped up behind the podium and made the case for New Hampshire adopting the Virginia opossum as its official state marsupial.
Presenting in front of a committee at the state capital would be a challenging task for anyone. Vivien said that Quarry helped the two students script their presentation, which they rehearsed extensively beforehand. Being side-by-side with her best friend, and taking turns speaking with her, also helped Vivien stay calm.
“On the bus ride there, we ran the script over and over again. It was definitely nerve-racking, but it wasn’t that bad, because I knew I was prepared,” said Vivien.
Afterwards, the class received a tour of the capitol building and ate lunch in the same cafeteria as their senators. And then they returned to school and waited. Quarry said that she continued following the legislation, but the opossum bill lingered in the Senate through the end of the school year.
It was not until the end of July that the bill was passed into law as a package with another bill that adds stricter charges to drunk driving with a passenger under 16 years old and with a combined vehicle weight over 10,000 pounds.
Vivien is about to enter sixth grade. She said that she was very excited about her pet project being adopted into law.
Although the class had to wait a while for their hard work to pay off, Quarry said that students and teachers kept asking about the bill’s progress, and she notified the entire class as soon as she got the news.
Quarry said the long wait was part of the learning experience. Government tends to move slowly.
“This was such a valuable lesson about government in general, and state government in particular. I think my students learned about what you can accomplish when you work together, and the importance of persistence,” Quarry said.
