Image courtesy of Wiki - Opossum ArticleWe have one horse, Jet, in the horse hospital at our Vet's office in Norman. We have another horse that somehow got all bruised up the other day in a separate corral.
All these people who talk about how we should return to using horses instead of cars have never owned horses.
Saturday morning I stopped by the corral to check on the hurt horse. She was pretty good.
But then I noticed that I had left the lids off the trash cans where I keep a small amount of oats and sweet feed for the horses. So I walked over to put the tops on the cans. The nearest one to me was the oats can and I put its top back on.
Then I moved over to the sweet feed can. As I bent over to get the lid I looked down into can. Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! There was an opossum down at the bottom of the can just happily eating his (or her) little self into contentment.
I was startled and jerked myself upright. At first I didn't know what it was down there. Fortunately it was an opossum and not a skunk or raccoon or rat or some other varmint.
But I had to get him out of the can so I figured since he got in there maybe he could get out by himself. So I kicked the can. That spooked the horses who ran around a bit and then came back over to see what the heck I was doing. They are a curious lot.
But friend opossum was unconcerned.
So I turned the can over on its side which made the open top point towards the horses. Mr. opossum took this opportunity to scurry out of the trash can. He went directly towards the horses. That spooked them again of course.
And the spooked horses spooked the opossum who turned around and ran towards me. And that spooked me and I jumped back except there wasn't any place to go.
But that scared the opossum and he ran down the side of the barn and the last I saw of him he was tearing across the horse lot into the pasture.
For one thing I am really glad no one was taking pictures because I was not at my most courageous.
Another thing I wondered though was whether this opossum had not been taught to play opossum. Because he never did.
And that's my surprise opossum story.
8 comments:
they're scary when they hiss! ours don't "play possum" either!
Courage? Shucks, I would have left the top off the can and gotten the heck outta there.
Funny story. ;-}
When we had the problem with the bats last year, my manager kept reminding me they were God's creatures too, in a sarcastic tone. I had to keep reminding myself of the same as I looked into this little guys beady eyes. Ack!
I'm sitting here laughing my head off picturing all of this. I can't stand those critters. We used to get them where I lived before and you can be sure that if I saw one in the yard, I stayed in the house.
Silly possum. I'll bet that did give you a start! Thanks for the lighthearted story Terry.
LOL! I can't stand those critters either. They remind me of giant rats!
That Mr. Possum will be a good side character for Petey!
we trapped one once in a squirrel trap and it wasn't a happy camper either, hissing and swatting. fortunately bob took it out to the woods to release it, far away from our house, about 15 miles!
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