Okay, we got possums!

What follows is a portion of an e-mail I sent in response to the question "How far do you take a possum into the woods before releasing it?" I frequently get my best focus from individual e-mails. I must learn to use this power for good!

When I was a kid, my dad and I would go fishing, frequently returning after dark. If he saw a dark shape scurry across the road, he would pull the old '52 Nash onto the shoulder, dip into the trunk, and go running off into the darkness with a "croaker sack", i.e. a burlap bag. He would return sometime later, throw his catch into the trunk, and we'd continue home.

"Home" was a farm, replete with old McDonald's menagerie: goats, chickens, cattle, rabbits, mules, and horses. Occasionally we had seasonal critters like turkeys, to liven things up.

There were rabbit cages down by the goat pens, and that's where the possums would go. They'd find themselves in a vacant cage, and it fell to me to bring them dried corn and water every morning. Although they'd cower and snarl, and occasionally "play dead", I became attached to them. I gave them names, and talked to them. Single children do strange things.

Eventually, after a few weeks they'd disappear from the cage. No mention was made of their fate, but it was coincidental that Dad broke out the crock pot, and there would be something cooking in it for a day or so. I sampled this forbidden fruit; it was tasty. "The other white meat."

Later on, when my state [public] schooling led me into college, I realized what had happened to the possums. Grotesque as it was, they were meat, not pets. Like Elly May Clampett, I embarked on a journey of exploration. I had feasted on The Children of the Night; now I owed it to them to regard their heritage.

Possums are unchanged for 800,000+ years. They are one of the oldest mammals in the fossil record. They are marsupials; they carry their young in pouches under the hind legs until the kids are ready to strike out on their own. Like Army Rangers, they operate at night, and own the darkness. They have sharp little teeth, and will bite the hell out of you if you offer an unprotected hand.

"Playing possum" is a real thing; if you make a lot of noise or create a violent racket, they will roll into a ball and feign death. These are not aggressive critters, but you don't want to back one into a corner. They'll lie there like they're dead, right up until the moment they bite the hell out of you. Possums want nothing more than to be left alone.

The famed director Tod Browning, who did the original "Dracula" movie with Bela Lugosi, and "Freaks", with real circus performers, used possums extensively in his second unit shots. They epitomize the "Children of the Night." Besides bats, they are truly after-dark operators. They steal eggs, and slaughter chickens when they can catch them on their roosts. Possums are unpleasant to look at, frequently being described as "hairy rats." Unlike rats, there is no documented instance of a possum attacking a domestic animal, except for their aforementioned chicken raids. They are known to invade trash cans, because mankind continues to encroach upon their habitat. We throw too much stuff away, and some of that garbage is mighty tasty. They are submissive when caught in a humane trap, and adapt well to relocation.

How far to take a possum into the woods? Beats me! My parents almost lost me when I was an infant, but they didn't take me far enough into the woods; it got dark, I got hungry, and found my way home. I have had an abnormal empathy and sympathy for possums since I was enlisted to care for them during my adolescence. They've come to symbolize survivors. One lays back, plays dead, and gives the enemy every opportunity to seek another target. In the end, though, if their hand grasps for you, you bite it. Hard. Possums don't have the teeth of carnivores, like dogs, because we only go for the throat if we have to. Be gentle with your neighborhood possum; catch it humanely, and take it to the deep woods and point it in the right direction.