the good life: the oppression of the opossum.

This past week, my dearest friend Whitney Bell, sent me a link to a YouTube video of an opossum snowboarding... I was creeped out. In addition to this, a few months ago, my friend Andrew Harman, sent me a text with a picture of an opossum scavenging his backyard and eating his kitty's food... okay. For those of you that didn't attend high school with me, you are reading this thinking, "Why the heck is P writing about possums". Well, let me tell ya...

For over a decade now, my high school friends, particularly Whit and Andrew, and I have been humorously sharing possum stories with each other. It all started about twelve years ago when we received a possum visitor at my house. Whit, Andrew, and I were hanging out one Saturday night (we were choir and theater nerds and didn't really do anything crazy). When it was time for both friends to go home, Whit stepped out on my porch first and immediately began screaming and running straight for her car (God bless that Jeep). Back then (and I am assuming now) Whitney was not much a fan of moths. Being a warm West Texas night, my porch light was flooded with Miller moths searching for whatever salvation they obsessively seek in light. I thought that Whitney had been responding to a moth attack.

As I walked out onto the porch to investigate the situation, I heard a creepy, hissing sound. Back then I had a old cat named Sprinkles (or Mr. Snickers as she was known to many of my friends). With my mom being allergic to cats, Sprink lived on our front porch. Anyway, back to the incident at hand... this hissing sound I heard was not a sound I had ever heard come from Sprink in all her 15 years (age at time of incident). This hissing sound was creepy and made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. It was like I was hearing someone scratch their nails down a chalkboard.

When I turned to look at the source of such a horrendous sound, I saw a possum standing over Sprinkle's bowl of cat food, drawing it's teeth at me. Well, you can imagine my reaction... very similar to Whitney's. At that point Andrew came out to witness the spectacle. That night became the first of many frequent, nightly visits from our possum friend. A possum sighting became highly anticipated among all of our group of friends... in a way, this rodent was like a celebrity. Whit, Andrew, and I came up with many names for him/her, but they are probably inappropriate for me to share with you.

Now, everytime any of us see a possum, we immediate share our sighting with friends. It just wouldn't feel right to keep such a creepy, and yet fascinating experience to ourselves. Ever since that fateful night in high school, possums have become an intregal part of our friendship. Weird yes. But so so true.