When I was 15, I went to an Earth Day festival in Savannah, which is where I met Violet, a domesticated possum. Her handler allowed me to pet her and play with her and she even let us see her little marsupial pouch.
The Midwesterner in me feel deeply in love with the possum when we moved south, and I think my brother got the bug too. Meeting Violet was merely the halfway point. We used to draw possums, insert possums into our school assignments and even pretend to be possums, hissing and dropping dead at a moments notice. Unlike a real possum though, we usually began to giggle mercilessly. Even my parents were in on it. They would leave notes in our lunch boxes and occasionally adorn it with a pun or even a hand crafted image of a possum.
It probably won't surprise anyone, after reading the first two paragraphs of this post, that I still L O V E possums. I even have a shirt with a possum on it and once I got to meet the Possum Queen when she visited Bill and Joel. I think I even missed a newscast because I was so excited that someone else loved possums like I did. That's how serious it was.
What do I love about these strange creatures? Firstly, they have a prehensile tail and they are marsupials, so they have a pouch. Just imagine how many things you could carry if you had a tail that curls and grips like a hand and an extra pouch? Secondly, their fur is soft but also wirey, which is the perfect metaphor for their personality. When they are frightened, they hiss and expose needle teeth but typically will not attack, they'll just play dead. This is something I also do when in danger. Thirdly, they not only eat a variety of fruits that I also enjoy, they also eat ticks and mosquitos and other nasty bugs that carry disease. Did you know that a possum's body temperature is so low it's almost impossible for them to catch rabies? I read somewhere it was about a one in 1000 chance they would catch rabies, meaning it would be more likely that a possum would strike and attack a rabid animal than it would be to spread the disease.
They also have a tendency to scream. I, too, have a tendency to scream.
I think the possum is seriously underrated. They make fantastic facial expressions when they're not squashed on the side of the road. They're practically blind during the day, and are nocturnal, according to Violet's handler, so if you see a possum during the day it's likely out of sorts and trying to actually get away from us humans and whatever mishmash is around us. Once, I dead stopped my car for a mama possum carrying her babies on her tail and the best part is, because I saw them, everyone in the other lanes stopped too! She safely crossed the road, and so did her babies. We also recently found a possum stuck in one of the hanging baskets on my parent's porch. We carefully set up a ramp (using a broom) so the possum could make it out instead of having to jump, and we easily watched her for an hour.
I've been dabbling in the concept of "spirit animals" and "totem animals" lately. I don't really understand the true method behind figuring these things out, aside from Facebook quizzes, but I really feel connected to my pal the possum. So much in fact, when I feel like writing but nothing is coming out, I make up stories about a lil possum named Priscilla. She lives in a plain old 'Merica and has a pink bow in her hair. Sometimes she retells my stories and secrets, other times she has her own stories to tell. It's fun to have a different voice sometimes, especially when it's an anthropomorphized possum.
I also think possums have some sort of connection to me and I've heard you don't really chose your spirit animal. Possums are pretty misunderstood and I have a habit of feeling that way. I do really resonate with the silly videos of possums eating grapes or the photos of possums saying relatable things in a funny voice. I had a much stronger accent when I moved to the south and was often teased by classmates for "sounding funny." I find it somewhat ironic that I speak for a living now. I found an image online once that was weirdly empowering: "He called me garbage, but that's where a possum thrives.*"
I think everyone has been put down at some point in their lives. But just because kids made fun of my accent in school, just because I've dated jerks, just because I've given in to peer pressure once or twice doesn't mean my view on life is really any worse than anybody else's.
After all, one man's trash is another possum's treasure.
*I went off my memory on this phrase around publication, but recently learned I was a little off. The image I saw was a photo of a letter board, not a macro image, and it used the word "garbage" instead of my frequently-uttered "trash." I located the initial image recently and decided to correct the blog. I do not know the original author of the quote, though, so if you know, feel free to drop me a line. -ACS 8/10/2020
