Opossums
Darren's close encounter with a hedgehog got me thinking about the kinds of animals that turn up in your garbage can. He's got hedgehogs. We've got 'possums. It's not as random or ridiculous a comparison as it might sound. Hedgehogs are insectivores (members of Eulipotyphla for you nerds), one of the most ancient lineages of placental mammals, and 'possums are marsupials--also ancient and primitive. Go back far enough and our linear ancestors looked something like hedgehogs (minus the spines, mebbe), and back a little farther they were, generally speaking, 'possums. When you stop and think about it, it's pretty amazing that we're sitting here, 65 million years into the Cenozoic, and we have these Cretaceous leftovers not just still with us, but here. Not trucking around in some Australian swamp, but raising hell on our back porches.
I've seen roughly a billion 'possums in my life. Most recently the one in our neighborhood came trotting along the top of brick fence that stands between our apartment building and the hotel next door. It was night and we saw him through the dining room window. It was Vicki's first sighting of a live 'possum, and she didn't know what it was. I'm not knocking her knowledge of mammals (although it is pretty pathetic: I once had her convinced that camels lay eggs). Opossums present a shocking appearance. They look like nothing so much as Rodents of Unusual Size. Long mangey snout, beady little eyes simmering with rabies and evil, groady tufts of grey hair sticking out all over the place like an old guy's nuts (uh, so I hear), and long scaly tail right off a king-size sewer rat. And I have NEVER seen a photo of a 'possum that was half as revolting as one in real life. When you see one, words like "scrofulous", "scabby" and "infested" come unbidden to your mind. And they show little fear of humans. It is disconcerting to have a giant groady rat going about its unholy business just a few feet away and manifestly not being afraid of you. It makes you want to get the fuck away, before it decides to come over and butt rape you and gnaw your ears off.
If that sounds excessively disgusting, then you've probably never seen a 'possum up close.
When I was nine, my family moved to a house in the country. It was an awesome place to grow up, because we were embedded in the natural world. Within a few hundred yards of house we've seen field mice, shrews, horned lizards, collared lizards (Oklahoma's state reptile), box turtles, gophers, ground squirrels, cottontails, bull snakes, cottonmouths, armadillos, skunks, badgers, raccoons, coyotes, deer, a few dozen species of birds including scissortail flycatchers (Oklahoma's state bird), a possibly apocryphal bobcat and a very definite mountain lion. And opossums out the wazoo.
One more ingredient: we're cat people. Not house cats, farm cats (although someday I do need to blog about my parents' first and last, horribly flatulent housecat). Life ain't easy for an Oklahoma farm cat. There are plenty of mice, gophers, and bunnies to eat, and we kept them plied with table scraps, too--although none ever ate the back-of-the-fridge jello that grandma used to put out for them now and then. The problem is that plenty of things will eat cat when they can get it, or fight the cats for food. We lost a lot of cats to coyotes over the years, and we shot a lot of skunks and 'possums. I'd never thought about it before this evening, but I suppose we might have lost some cats to mountain lions. Anyway, skunks and 'possums were bad news, but the local populations seemed to suffer not at all from the selection pressure we imposed (i.e., keep your skanky face out of the cat bowl, bitches!). I wish now that I'd been skeletonizing carcasses back then, I coulda cleaned up.
One night when I was a teenager I came home late and caught a 'possum in the open. It was headed for the cat bowl. There was a stack of bricks nearby, so I (man this will not sound good to my Californiafied friends) picked up a brick and threw it at the 'possum. And I hit it, too, from a range of better than 20 feet, in the dark, while it was running. It was unquestionably the greatest athletic achievement of my life. The 'possum just crumpled up on the ground with the brick resting on its unnaturally concave ribcage, as if the brick had just nailed it to the ground. WHAM! I don't mind saying this: it felt great to make that shot. I approached and saw that the varmit was still alive, just barely. It didn't suffer for long. A couple of minutes later my grandpa came out and thirty-ought-sixed it into metatherian heaven.
I was going to cap that grim little episode with the redemptive story of my second close encounter with a 'possum, but I am zapped, so it will have to wait. As a reminder and prod, I will wax Naishian and list some things that I need to blog about: opossum by moonlight, retarded cats, encounters with armadillos, softshell turtles, and the Beetle Survey. Oh, and the new issue of JVP. That will do for starters.
G'night.
I've seen roughly a billion 'possums in my life. Most recently the one in our neighborhood came trotting along the top of brick fence that stands between our apartment building and the hotel next door. It was night and we saw him through the dining room window. It was Vicki's first sighting of a live 'possum, and she didn't know what it was. I'm not knocking her knowledge of mammals (although it is pretty pathetic: I once had her convinced that camels lay eggs). Opossums present a shocking appearance. They look like nothing so much as Rodents of Unusual Size. Long mangey snout, beady little eyes simmering with rabies and evil, groady tufts of grey hair sticking out all over the place like an old guy's nuts (uh, so I hear), and long scaly tail right off a king-size sewer rat. And I have NEVER seen a photo of a 'possum that was half as revolting as one in real life. When you see one, words like "scrofulous", "scabby" and "infested" come unbidden to your mind. And they show little fear of humans. It is disconcerting to have a giant groady rat going about its unholy business just a few feet away and manifestly not being afraid of you. It makes you want to get the fuck away, before it decides to come over and butt rape you and gnaw your ears off.
If that sounds excessively disgusting, then you've probably never seen a 'possum up close.
When I was nine, my family moved to a house in the country. It was an awesome place to grow up, because we were embedded in the natural world. Within a few hundred yards of house we've seen field mice, shrews, horned lizards, collared lizards (Oklahoma's state reptile), box turtles, gophers, ground squirrels, cottontails, bull snakes, cottonmouths, armadillos, skunks, badgers, raccoons, coyotes, deer, a few dozen species of birds including scissortail flycatchers (Oklahoma's state bird), a possibly apocryphal bobcat and a very definite mountain lion. And opossums out the wazoo.
One more ingredient: we're cat people. Not house cats, farm cats (although someday I do need to blog about my parents' first and last, horribly flatulent housecat). Life ain't easy for an Oklahoma farm cat. There are plenty of mice, gophers, and bunnies to eat, and we kept them plied with table scraps, too--although none ever ate the back-of-the-fridge jello that grandma used to put out for them now and then. The problem is that plenty of things will eat cat when they can get it, or fight the cats for food. We lost a lot of cats to coyotes over the years, and we shot a lot of skunks and 'possums. I'd never thought about it before this evening, but I suppose we might have lost some cats to mountain lions. Anyway, skunks and 'possums were bad news, but the local populations seemed to suffer not at all from the selection pressure we imposed (i.e., keep your skanky face out of the cat bowl, bitches!). I wish now that I'd been skeletonizing carcasses back then, I coulda cleaned up.
One night when I was a teenager I came home late and caught a 'possum in the open. It was headed for the cat bowl. There was a stack of bricks nearby, so I (man this will not sound good to my Californiafied friends) picked up a brick and threw it at the 'possum. And I hit it, too, from a range of better than 20 feet, in the dark, while it was running. It was unquestionably the greatest athletic achievement of my life. The 'possum just crumpled up on the ground with the brick resting on its unnaturally concave ribcage, as if the brick had just nailed it to the ground. WHAM! I don't mind saying this: it felt great to make that shot. I approached and saw that the varmit was still alive, just barely. It didn't suffer for long. A couple of minutes later my grandpa came out and thirty-ought-sixed it into metatherian heaven.
I was going to cap that grim little episode with the redemptive story of my second close encounter with a 'possum, but I am zapped, so it will have to wait. As a reminder and prod, I will wax Naishian and list some things that I need to blog about: opossum by moonlight, retarded cats, encounters with armadillos, softshell turtles, and the Beetle Survey. Oh, and the new issue of JVP. That will do for starters.
G'night.
posted by Dr. Vector at 12:22 AM
1 Comments:
very interesting story...and I agree, Opossums are the scourge of this planet. I remember our family beagle (mind you, this beagle never once showed any aggressive tendencies to anything that wasn't table scraps) barking viciously as an Opossum scurried across our backyard fence. Rosie (the beagle in question) was actually on her hind legs following the beast and forcibly shaking the fence in what I can only assume was an idiotic attempt to dislodge the opossum. Thankfully for our spoiled and soft hearted beagle, the opossum did not lose its grip. In fact, the opossum didn't even change demeanor and showed no fear or panic, goddamn abomination.
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