The suspects

Being as I am no longer gainfully employed in one of those jobs where you actually have to put on a suit and leave the house to go to work, I have the luxury of locating Confined Space World Headquarters in my basement. While composing horror stories of life in Washington DC, I can look out over our wooded back yard and watch our three dogs frolic with the furry woodland friends that occasionally wonder over or under the fence.

Of course, by “frolic,” I usually mean “maim and kill.”  I mean, whaddyagonnado? They’re dogs, cousins of wolves.  (OK, distant cousins in the case of the Scotty and chihuahua mixture.)

So it was with much heartbreak and not a little anger that I discovered the lifeless corpse of a possum this morning when I went out see why the dogs weren’t coming in for breakfast.  And being the MAN in the family, I got ready to do what REAL MEN do in these cases: Drink my coffee and eat my breakfast. And read the Washington Post, New York Times, email, Twitter and Facebook.

Scene of the alleged crime.

Finally running out of IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO and watching the temperature begin its rise into the 80s, I retrieved the pitchfork and extra strong plastic bags to do my MANLY duty and dispose of the corpse before the flies and maggots discovered it.

And yes, some of you have guessed it. The possum — being a possum — was gone.  With no corpus to habeas, the probable perpetrator — our Transylvanian Hound — was off the hook. Turns out that “playing possum” is not just an overused phrase; it’s a reality. (either that, or there’s a zombie possum walking the earth.)

I should have known, being as this is the 3rd time in my 35 year dog and house-owning life that I’ve been all revved up to do my MANLY undertaker duties only to find that the alleged possum corpse has beaten a hasty retreat. (OK, there was one time when the corpse was really a corpse. Significant blood loss and all that…)

The moral of the story: If you stall long enough, maybe the problem will take care of itself.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program…..

One thought on “Possum Blogging”
  1. This is a hilarious post, Jordan. I, too, had a “dead” possum right in our front yard in Berkeley, complete with tongue hanging out, mouth gaping open, drooling, dead-looking eyes, legs akimbo: the animal looked dead-dead-dead, after having an encounter with a neighborhood dog. Sure enough, when I went back to attempt the grisly task of recovering and disposing of the possum body, the animal had gotten up and walked off. All that was left was the drool puddle. And jeez was I relieved–It really made me appreciate what it means to “play possum” and the cleverness of the animal to be so damn convincing!

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