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Possums: crocheting and knitting and dumpster diving their way into our lives


Larry of the Lawn

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A portly and genial possum lives under the floor board of our shed for a couple of years, and temporarily fostered our now deceased cat Kevin.  Kevin jumped off the bumper of a car in front of our house at the tender age of 8 weeks, and then scurried into the backyard when my roommate tried to catch him.  He ran under the floor boards of the shed.  

I arrived home hours later to a roommate despondent and inconsolable regarding the kitten trapped in the Deep of the shed.  We went back there and i opened the hole in the floor enough to get a hand down there, at which point the roommate seemes to rise from her depression and stuck here phone down there and snapped some pictures.  

This was a mid November night in upstate New York, the temperature hovering around 20 F.  We checked the pictures in her phone and saw a black-eyes hoary possum baring it's 40+ teeth, and pressed against it's flank mangy and malnourished, but now warm, kitten.  

Two days later my roommate had lured the kitten onto our porch, he then lived a memorable but brief two years with us.  His name changed from Owl to Kevin at somepoint, and I think of him often.  And of the possum who kept him warm that cold November night.

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There were no possums in Canada at all until about 30 years ago. One day there was a news report about possums being found in the Niagara Falls area. The suspicion was they crossed over on the railway bridge, and now they are everywhere. 

A year or so after the story appeared I was having lunch at work, out in suburbia. The cafeteria was on ground level and overlooked a little woodland with a pond. All of a sudden there was a murmur in the lunch crowd as a possum strolled outside our windows on the patio area. I don’t think any of us had ever seen one before. Ugly thing with a hairless tale. Never saw it again.

We also had ducks that would come back every year and raise a family, and a fox that made a den and also came back every year to raise her kits. Then they’d vanish when they got old enough to travel.

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51 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ugly thing with a hairless tale. Never saw it again.

I saw my first possum last fall. A baby one somehow fell into our leaf garbage bin. It was absolutely adorable, and every time I looked in it would immediately play dead. Those things get ugly though when they flash their fangs.

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I saw my first possum last fall. A baby one somehow fell into our leaf garbage bin. It was absolutely adorable, and every time I looked in it would immediately play dead. Those things get ugly though when they flash their fangs.

Babies are always adorable! Most babies, anyway. :p 

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