Playing Possum

When my children were young, we had a favorite book about a possum family. The illustrations portrayed the rodents as cute, lovable creatures. Well, have you ever seen a possum? They're like a rat...only HIDEOUS and HUGE. Here is a story about my encounter with a possum.

For those of you who remember our home in Corona, you know that the swimming pool was in a fenced area at the side of our house. I often left Lucky (the dog) out in that fenced area so she could run and play. It was late at night and I was home alone. I heard the dog wildly barking and I went outside--in bare feet and pajamas--to see what she was barking at (if you were watchng a movie, this is where the scary music would begin). When I got out there, I could see that she was barking at and ready to attack a possum who was slowly backing up toward the pool. Two more steps and SPLASH, the possum went into the pool and was madly flailing around trying to get out. I was thinking, "would I rather get a wet possum out of the pool now or a dead possum out in the morning?" I went with the first option. I found the long handled pool net and started scooping it up. Between the weight of the possum and the water, I was pulling with all of my might to get it out.

Finally, I got it up and once it was out of the water, the weight lifted and I was standing there with the possum high up in the air, scared to death, hanging on for dear life at the end of the pole. He started hissing at me and then began to scurry down the pole towards me. Now I was scared and just hurled the thing across the yard. It splatted against the fence and dropped dead.

I got the dog in the house so she didn't have a feast of dead possum and waited for Jeff to get home. About an hour later, when he came home, I told him to get a shovel and pick up the dead possum and throw it in the garbage can. He came back inside telling me that there was no dead possum in the backyard. We went out together with flashlights and looked all over the backyard but it was gone. Evidently, he had played dead until I was gone and then quietly meandered back home.

My grandmother used to always talk about "playing possum." That's what she was talking about.

*Today one of our vocabulary words was calamitous so I shared this story to explain a calamitous event in my life.