I don’t know if it’s just me, or if it’s these bad economic times, but I’ve been seeing lots of dead possums on the roads lately.  Now I know you Yankees out there are screaming, “It’s Opossum, you silly rube!”.  Honestly though, the only time I’ve ever used that alternative pronunciation is when I took the lid off of  a trash can outside of my Stepbrother Eric’s house and yelled, “OhhhhPossum!!!”, just before I ran 18 miles through the woods. 
     Funny thing is, these passed possums’ faces I’ve been seeing, all looked like they were completely at peace.  It almost looked like they were smiling.  Now, I don’t know how many of you out there have ever had a run in with a possum, but one thing they are not, is ‘at peace’.
     When I was in elementary school, one of my classmates had a pet possum.  This was my first introduction to a marsupial.  Seems his pet possum had relations with a wild possum, (cause there’s a HUGE difference), and had a litter of baby possums. So my classmate asked, “You wanna see some baby possums, in their momma’s stomach?”.  Of course I couldn’t refuse.  So, after being bitten 78 times by his ‘pet’ possum, he stretched open her pouch and showed me her little nursing possumettes.  All redneck jokes aside, this was pretty amazing.  Especially when I responded ‘Yes’ to, “You wanna’ touch ’em?”
     Back before I became a pacifist, and retired from deer huntin’, I had a pretty strange experience in the woods.  It was a cold November morning, and I was in my deer stand about 30 mins. before dawn.  As light slowly worked it’s way into the woods, I saw this white-looking object moving through the woods.  I don’t really believe in ghosts, but at that time, I was pretty close to converting!  The specter kept getting closer and closer until it finally stopped about 50 yards in front of me.  It hovered there for a few minutes before finally taking off and floating up 70-100 feet up in the air in this strange zigzag pattern.  Then it just stopped and stayed in one place the rest of the morning.  I was happy, that whatever it was, hadn’t flown towards me, and I tried to remain as still as possible until the sun was up.  Surely a ghost would disappear in the daylight.  Not this one though.  When there was finally enough light for me to see, I focused in on the white blob, only to see a possum hanging upside down in a tree.  The zigzag flight pattern was the possum climbing the tree cork screw style!
     A buddy of mine told me a story one time,  about a possum he saw in the road.  He and another friend were riding down the road, late at night, when they saw something large in the road up ahead.  As they got closer they saw that it was a possum, sitting up on it’s hind-end, eating road kill.  My friends said when they got up close to the possibly cannibal possum, they couldn’t take their eyes off of him, sitting up and eating with his paws(hands), looking right back at them as they passed by.
Moral of the story, possums are evil, or at least they come across that way.  That hiss that they make when threatened, (which according to a possum, is every time they see man), is enough to scare anyone out of their shoes.  Possums always seem to have a look on their face that says, “I’m ’bout to eat yo ass alive!”.
Like I said though, these dead possums in the roads always seem to be smiling and at peace.  It must be a pretty rough world for a possum when the only relief comes from a tire zooming by at 60 MPH.  I’m not saying possums are purposely running out in front of cars, but I don’t think they are trying that hard to miss them, either.

possum

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 7:23 am and is filed under MonkeySpeak. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.