My Encounter With The Opossum

Awhile back, my friend Dave had a funny facebook status in which he mentioned a woodchuck. It reminded me of “My Encounter With The Opossum” — “my” because it was personal, “the” because it wasn’t just any opossum. It happened one summer morning in North Texas.  I left my apartment and was making my way through a maze of shrubs towards my parking garage — not paying much attention to my surroundings, as this had been my daily routine for a year. As I rounded a corner, I looked up just in time to see an animal emerge from the under the shrubbery. Only, it didn’t just “emerge” and then be on its way. Like a gatekeeper, it boldly stepped directly in my path and stopped, blocking my way through. I froze, not because I thought I should or because I was scared – but because all of my brain’s known resources were working on processing the image it received. I didn’t know what it was. Its skin was a jaundiced pink tone, and what little fur it had was wirey and white. Its eyes were tiny, but I could see that they, too, were pink. It was when it hissed at me and showed me its sharp little teeth that I thought “hairless cat”, but that didn’t resolve due to it having weird claw-type feet and a long pointy snout. It was also at that moment that I didn’t care what it was. Fight or flight kicked in, and I flew in the opposite direction.

It was several days later, at a cook-out, that I learned it was an albino opossum. Apparently I wasn’t the only resident that it had bullied that week. Legend has it, that it moved in under the shrubs and had babies, but I can neither confirm nor deny that statement. I never walked that way to my garage again.

I really look forward to Dave’s story of his encounter with a rabid raccoon.

Mother Nature is a bitch.