Most of an opossum’s odor comes from a diet of carrion. They’ll urinate or defecate sometimes when they are scared. Maybe that’s what the guy was talking about? They have musk glands but their musk is no worse than any other wild animal, imo.
The people that like to eat ‘em usually like to catch them, pen them up for a couple of weeks, and feed them corn and vegetable scraps …. to "clean them out". They don’t smell that bad and after that, and taste a lot better.
I’m not a biologist either, but I’ve caught quite a few of them (almost always give them away… (not really my choice of meat, and too much trouble for it). Common method of capture is to chase them down and kick them or hit them with a broom handle. It usually takes more than one hit to get it to play dead. Then you pick it up by the tail. They "come to" then, but can’t get to you because the tail is too weak to for them to pull themselves up by it. Then, drop ‘em in a burlap bag or cage… easy.
Oh yeah, the OP question …
any emotion
any distraction
anything in your sights besides BG’s center of mass