matthew.

Tonight I made friends with a three legged opossum. I named her Hespa. She is my favorite opossum.

When I was a child, I used to be seriously afraid of them....the opossums. Once, I was heading out to the mall with my mom. I decided to start the car (because it is really cool to do when you are like 9) and wait for her. WELL! I stepped out onto the porch and down the steps I went.

THERE IT WAS!

An opossum. With it's large body and long ass tail, sitting under the bushes next to the car. I screamed. I screamed so loud my mother thought I was being attacked. ( I was...mentally...).

I ran back up the stairs and onto the porch. I had locked the door behind me when I left, so I wedged myself in between the screen door and the front door. Yes, the ever protective screen door, keeping out mosquitoes and burglars since the good old days.

Somehow I manged to shut the screen door behind me and I trapped myself in the safe haven of screen and wood. My mother opened the door and I ran in. It was then I realized that I had literally jumped out of my shoes. I left them sitting on the front porch under the hanging light that lit my way to freedom. I left them there. A monument to the fact that I escaped such danger at a young age.

I didn't go back outside that night. It took a while for me to get comfortable with going down those front stairs in the dark. I somehow managed to overcome the fear of seeing an opossum under the bush, near the car.

Ever since then however, I have had an odd paranoia about the opossum. That is, until, this evening. Joey and I were playing cribbage on the back porch of my mom's house (she was away and we were looking after the property). We heard a noise and I investigated. Nothing was there on the porch, although it sounded like there was someone walking around. Then, I got a flashlight and looked under the porch. I couldn't really see anything....



UNTIL!

My line of vision realized that there was an opossum 10 inches away! She was just sitting there, not moving, petrified of what predator I might be. I watched her walk away and I snapped a few pictures of her through the lattice. As I watched her wobble away to the front of the house, i noticed she was having difficulty. It was then saw that she was missing her rear left leg. More precisely, her tibia, fibia and foot. Her femur seemed to be intact. (Thanks A&P 1!!)

I went back up on the porch and got a blueberry out of my sangria. I went back down and found her again and left the blueberry near her.

Me and Hespa, you see, have a history. Although she is not the same opossum I met years ago, I did see her at the beginning of the summer with her young (the appropriate name for baby opossums, i googled it.). I watched her walk through the yard and stare me down as she did so.

I can only imagine she escaped death from the grips of one of the coyotes that lurks the neighborhood. i hope that she will survive, but I know, deep down, I'll be removing her body from under the porch in a matter of weeks. Poor Hespa.