Night of the long-tailed beast!

Tom Moertel — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 22:39:00 -0500

When I let the dog out this evening, it didn’t take long for her to start barking. Figuring she had cornered the neighbor’s cat, I went outside and called her. Naturally, she ignored my order to come back into the house.

Angrily, I marched up to her, underneath the crabapple tree, and took her by the collar. I made sure to bend low and look her in the eyes, just to let her know that I was not happy about having to walk in the wet grass to fetch her. When I stood up to lead her back to the house, my head reached into the lower branches of the crabapple tree.

And then I saw it, inches from my face, looking right back at me.

Instinctively, I jumped back. What the hell was that thing? It definitely was bigger than a cat, and it had a freakish, rat-like tail. And it was looking right at me.

I took the dog back into the house. Then, regaining my composure, I grabbed my camera and tripod, intent on capturing the beast on film. By this time I realized that it must be an opossum. I had seen a few as a child when I lived in rural Pennsylvania.

Opossums are harmless and often act like they are dead – “playing possum” – when threatened. They actually go stiff. This one, for example, held itself completely motionless during the eight-second exposure that I used to capture the following photo without flash in the dark Pittsburgh night:

If you check the Wikipedia entry on Virginia Opossum, you’ll see a more ferocious looking specimen, which is how I imagine my opossum looked when I first saw it. Nevertheless, opossums are harmless. If you want to see them at their most cuddly, check out the photos on the PossumRescue.com home page, where I found this little guy:

Local copy so as not to take bandwith from PossumRescue’s server.
(Look at how cute he is. Could you take bandwidth from his server?)

More opossum tidbits:

Opossums are North America’s only marsupials. They carry their young in pouches, just like kangaroos do.
Opossums have opposable thumbs on their hind feet.
When opossums play dead, they enter an involuntary coma and emit a stinky, I-am-dead scent.

Opossums are interesting stuff.

Tom Moertel's Weblog: Tag opossums

Night of the long-tailed beast!