A furry encounter
I was up very early in the morning working a page, and when the six o’clock alarm rang I was less than enthusiastic towards obeying its shrill commands. Sleep seemed a much better alternative and I knew my team would understand if I rolled in a few hours late. I mean, I was up making sure things ran smoothly while they all slumbered!
A few minutes after the alarm, Lori came into the bedroom frantically trying to wake me up. “Tim! Butter got a bird and is trying to bring it inside!” Butter is our lab retriever mix and is quite the huntress, so this news didn’t surprise me. Sleep seemed much more interesting.
“That’s nice,” I said, and rolled over like an exhausted lump of cheese.
Ten minutes later I finally got up and got cleaned up, completely forgetting what Lori said. After I was finally awake, clean, and dressed, Lori asked, “what should we do about Butter’s catch?”
“Is it dead?” I asked knowing that it was very likely that Butter had indeed caught and killed a bird. Disgusting or not, it is a fact of life with carnivorous hunting animals.
“I think so,” she said with obvious concern.
I grabbed a Wal-Mart sack from our stash and went into the backyard looking for the prey. I didn’t want the dogs to get sick if the bird had been carrying any diseases, so I wasn’t about to leave it for them to use as a chew toy or a mid-morning snack.
Both of us combed the backyard, looking in all the usual places for a wounded or dead bird. The grass was still short from a recent mowing so it should have stood out. I checked the dog’s favorite holes and spots near the fence, and couldn’t find it.
After a few minutes, Butter helped us out and picked up a small furry creature. She brought it closer to us and dropped it. I saw that it was still moving, but it definitely wasn’t a bird. It was a small rodent about the size and color of a common rat. It had a big snout and odd looking feet with toes on the back that looked like little thumbs.
“Is it an ant-eater?” I asked, knowing how foolish the question sounded once I said it. At that point it dawned on me what the creature really was.
To be safe, I picked up the creature with the Wal-Mart sack, and noticed that it clearly wasn’t dead and it wasn’t even wounded. It was “playing opossum” and that was a very fitting thing to do considering that the creature was, indeed, an opossum. I was impressed that the dogs hadn’t damaged the little critter, but I guess the defense mechanism that the little guy inherited from his forefathers came in handy.
I took the opossum out of the bag and took him to the park next door, where he probably came from anyway. The little guy started moving around a lot more so he probably realized I wasn’t going to hurt him.
I put him at the base of the big tree in the center of the park and he looked around and sauntered off. Then I washed my hands and we went to work.
After work I looked for the opossum and couldn’t find it. I knew he’d be safer back out on his own. Good luck, little guy!
October 5th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
“lump of cheese”? what an analogy…why cheese? are you talking about like a cheese log? haha…
opossum? is that the same as a possum? or is that the true spelling? LOL. i dunno. also do anteaters ever come that small (rodent-size?)?
butter…haha…i like that name.
ok, since i’m not sure which is the best way to get to you, i’ll post here. i sent an e-mail to your buddy-list e-mail address, but i don’t know how often you check that one.
anyways, one of the e-mail addy’s I check is sadkorean@fastmail.us. my cell number is still the same and if you need to snail mail me anything just look up my parents’ name in the ok phone book.
October 6th, 2005 at 8:03 am
The cool thing is it wasnt dead. The cats at my house have been killing all sorts of random creatures and bringing them home to share.