I am not a fan of possums. First, let me clarify. I had to look it up to be certain, but one source says that the actual name for the North American marsupial is Opossum. The marsupial named possum, it says, lives in Australia and is closely related to the kangaroo. That’s all well and good, but round these parts, we say possum. I will be talking about possums, those creepy nighttime creatures who live near me. I just do not like possums. In general, I really like nocturnal animals. I appreciate their covert operations under the cover of darkness, and their mysterious world that is alive and active whilst we sleep peacefully. But possums, I could do without.
OK, you animal advocates, I know that possums play a vital role in the forest ecosystem, eating ticks and bugs and providing other positive benefits. Still doesn’t sway my opinion. If you see a possum attempting to ‘dart’ across the road at night, with its jerky, uncoordinated, stop and start, never knowing which way it’s going behavior, I mean, yeeesh. If you see that pale pink pointy nose with its twitching nostrils, ugggh. And that tail. I can’t even.
Now that you know where I stand, I want to share with you my possum story. At the time, we had two big dogs, who were very vivacious, and very loud. We had a large fenced backyard adjacent to undeveloped woods.
We often saw various wildlife passing through the woods, approaching our yard and moving on. Our dogs were very engaged in all the outside activity. Anything surprising, noisy, unexpected, or mundane could cause them to bark crazily, feeding off of one another’s energy, working themselves into a barking frenzy.
Our yard 
Jazz and Zelly
One morning, after I put the dogs in the yard, the barking started. I quickly ran outside to stop the madness. I immediately noticed that there, on the other side of the fence, was a possum, and the dogs were not happy about it. By myself, I was not able to settle down the dogs or corral them. So, I turned my attention to the possum.
The possum was standing a few feet from the fence, parallel to the fence, with his face turned toward us. His face was squinched up with an angry twist, his teeth were bared, and he was hissing with a choking sound, spit flying in all directions. Just yuck. Now, with my higher-level thinking skills, it was easy for me to see that there was a fence between the possum and the dogs. The dogs could not get to him. If he turned and walked away, it would all be over. But the possum could not summon higher-level thinking skills. So, he stood his ground.
I started yelling at him and flailing my arms, making myself look bigger, as one does to scare away a bear. I yelled “GIT-ON-OUTTA-HEEAH” with gusto. He didn’t budge. I looked around the yard and found some rocks. I started throwing rocks, first around him, then actually at him, to startle him and make him run away. He didn’t move. His hissy fit continued and my dogs’ barking frenzy continued.
I found a long limb that had fallen off a tree, and maneuvered it through a spot in the fence. I poked the possum. Nothing changed. Frustrated, I reared back with the big stick and poked the possum VERY HARD. Right before my eyes, the possum stiffened as hard as a board, tilted slightly, and then crashed over with stiff legs sticking up in the air. Oh NO! I Killed it! I was stunned. I wasn’t a fan, but I didn’t mean for it to die.
With a break in the action, the dogs settled down, and I was able to get them secured back inside the house. I kept them inside the rest of the day, not sure what to do about the animal corpse outside, knowing it might still cause commotion when the dogs returned. At the end of the day, I went outside to face the music. When I got outside, as you can probably guess, the possum was gone. I stood with my mouth open, searching my brain, trying to figure out what was going on. Where was the possum? The possum? Possum….. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It finally sunk in. He wasn’t dead; he was playing possum. Unbelievable.
Why did it take me so long to realize what had happened? Why did I think the possum had suffered a stress-induced heart attack? I think that, while I had heard about possums playing dead, maybe even seen it on Nat Geo, I didn’t realize how it would look in the flesh. I guess I thought it would be like a little kid hiding under the covers trying to convince his parents that he was asleep. But, this guy was not peeking to see if I reacted. This guy was out, completely gone. D.O.A. As a side point, how does that even work? If you were a predator aggressively stalking prey, and the prey suddenly flopped to the ground, wouldn’t you say "cool, that was easy", and proceed to eat it up? I don’t know, maybe there’s a repelling stench. Anyway, back on point. When a possum is stressed, apparently, an enzyme is released automatically which causes him to go into shock. He doesn’t try to play dead. It’s involuntary, it just happens. And it is utterly shocking. I’ve never seen anything like it. Weird, weird, weird.
So, again, I ask, why did it take me so long to figure out the possum story? Why did I foolishly think I had killed him? How did I not comprehend what was going on?
I have found that, sometimes, things are happening right in front of us, but we don’t understand. We have trouble recognizing what’s happening, even though we have enough background information to make sense of it all. I sometimes wish that I could do a Goggle Search of my brain to see if there is anything in there relevant to the current topic; if so, bring it to the front, so I can use the information. Too many times, I wonder, how did I forget about THAT? Why didn’t I SEE that? How could I miss it? It was SO OBVIOUS!
Anybody else wonder if the year 2020, with all the crazy stuff happening out there, will be the year when it all comes into focus? Will we learn, in 2020, to think rationally, to see clearly? 2020 Vision? Can we see the things that are happening right in front of us? Will we learn to use our brains to sort and filter information and recognize things for what they are? Can we interpret what is happening and make sense of it? Can we trust ourselves to understand the things we see and hear? I hope so. Otherwise, the possums might get the better of us. Possum sez, “heh, heh, heh, gotcha” as he scurries off.
Good riddance.