O-possum!

2001-03-30

I know I am utterly ridiculous, but my throat is still sore from screaming, "YES!!" last night when the Evil Jerri was finally voted out on Survivor. It was beautiful, it was excellent television. My poor cat Esther ran from the room in terror because we were all screaming. I'm glad we don't live in an apartment or someone might've called the cops. I'm really looking forward to seeing how things shake down now that the "tribesmembers" are forming new allegiances. And yay, the nice Elizabeth is still there. She and Rodger are my favorites. I love love love that show. So sue me.

We're leaving for the beach this afternoon, and even though it might rain, we're going to have a good time. We're taking Way too much stuff for just two days there; I don't know if the car will hold it all. It's mostly food that will take up all the room--we're only going to eat one meal out, so have to take everything else we'll want. Francisco and I are going to make a risotto tomorrow night, and we've never made that before. I love risotto, so I'm hoping it turns out great and isn't too big a pain in the ass.

Topic jump: opossums. I've been seeing a lot of dead opossums on the roads these days, and it makes me sad. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but when I was a kid we raised 5 baby opossums one summer. My brother was out riding his bike and he saw an opossum that had been hit by a car, and there was a baby on top of it. He rode home really fast and told me, and we got a paper sack and rode back there. The baby was still there, so my brother picked it up by the tail and we put it in the sack. Rode home fast, with the baby hissing in the bag. Showed my mom, who Loves animals. She declared that we would take it to the vet. We piled into the family stationwagon (light blue, a behemoth), and set out. On the way we had to pass the dead opossum, and my mom slowed the car and said, almost to herself and in a somewhat shrinking voice, "I wonder if there are any more...". She stopped the car and got out and actually STUCK HER HAND into the opossum's pouch and pulled out 4 more live babies. I am very proud of her for doing that, it was very anti-squeamish. Back on the road to the vet, and when we got there he said they weren't injured but he wasn't sure what to do for them. He said he would ask around.

Back home with the opossums. My mom whipped up her special baby animal milk (canned evaporated milk and light Karo syrup) and we fed the babies with eyedroppers. We had to set alarms to get up at night and feed them. By the time they were old enough to eat real food, the vet had found a woman who had an adult pet opossum and my mom had called her for help. The woman advised my mom that, while opossums would eat almost anything, the babies would do well on mashed bananas and some weird baby meat stuff my mom had to order from a special store. So that's what they ate, and they thrived.

My dad constructed them a two-story cardboard opossum house that they would vigorously chew their way out of at night. They roamed the house, they were the kings of the night. They crawled on us in our beds and slept amongst the towels in the linen closet. They were really great. We liked playing with them and picking them up by their tails (the tails would curl around your finger and they would hang there).

The local paper heard about them and did a little story on the opossums. At this point they were getting bigger and we knew we really couldn't keep them too much longer, but we couldn't release them into the woods or anything because they wouldn't know what to do. The newspaper article prompted numerous people to call and ask if they could have an opossum as a pet, so after careful screening of the "applicants", we gave one opossum each to 5 people we felt were suitable. Well, my parents did that, really, we were too young, but I know they were careful who they gave the opossums to.

I told that story to my friend, Isabel, and she says she always thinks of it when she sees an opossum that was killed--she slows the car to look for babies. I do too.

I guess that was long-winded enough for today. Bye you guys, have a great weekend! On Monday I'll have a full report about the beach weekend. If anyone wants to know, that is.

Love,

E

"He's got to have his Dip-Tet! He don't have his Dip-Tet, he'll develop lockjaw and night vision!" |

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