It was night time. I was lying on the concrete floor,
my nose six inches from the glass entrance. It was below freezing outside and
it had been that way for weeks. The wild things were hungry and coming up on
the porch in search of food. I’d been alone for days and days and I was beyond
bored.
Six inches on his side of the glass a possum was nuzzling
the cat’s dish. His sensitive flexible snout was searching out every leftover
crumb. From my recumbent position I was keeping him company though he didn’t
know it.
A day later, remembering all the details I wrote of
his fat pink tapered fingers that seemed to be emerging from soft grey driving
gloves; white understory fur with occasional long black hairs that
waved in the cold gusts of wind. I thought those flexible hairs must give him a
lot of information, almost like antennae.
I wrote about his darling ears; the thin curved pink
hearts with grey arches above, really his finest feature. Tactfully, I did not
to mention his tail.
I’d begun leaving a bit of extra food in the cats’
dish for him and any other creatures that might be in need.
This week, I saw a possum at the dish in full
daylight. I got out the camera and zoomed in.
What a shock!Only his hands were as I remembered them. His fur was not dense; the understory was black, not white, and it looked more like a bad perm on a balding head than fur. The longest hairs were white, not black. And the ears! The heart shapes I remembered so fondly were dark grey and only the tip above them was pink. Did I get it totally wrong or was this a mutant brother to the first one?
The camera has recorded the truth about what I am
calling Possum #2. I’m still on the lookout for #1. I can’t believe he, she, exists
nowhere but in my mind. She was darling.
But #2, well, you can see for yourself.
I know that humans are sloppy and clueless observers whose
left brains fib constantly to fill in the gaps in memory. I know that the way we
interpret what we see is a reflection of our needs our fears or our beliefs
more than reality. But still, I don’t think I could have been that wrong.
Here’s an example of that from earlier in the week:
I heard a noise I could not identify. ‘It’s a hawk,’ I
thought, ‘hunting,’ but I wasn’t sure. Outside the office window I could see
Fluffmudgett turn her head sharply to the east and focus on something. I went
to the front door, though I thought that by the time I got outside, whatever it
was would be long gone. Still I was curious enough to be hopeful. I heard it again as I emerged onto the porch and
I could see Floyd, slinking in killer-stealth mode, directly east. Focused as a
laser, he slipped beneath my car.
So, me, I looked up.
I believed it was a hawk and was still believing as I scanned the empty cerulean
biosphere. More clueless and blind than a possum, who can at least find food
even if he fails to detect the human being 12 inches from his left ear, I was
looking in the direction of my belief, not my evidence.
When I lowered my mystified gaze easterly to the edge
of the hill 20 feet in front of me I found myself in a staring contest with a
big red fox. The first thing I thought was, ‘Wow, mystery solved.’ The second
was, ‘Good show, Floyd, you hot dog, but I know there’s no way you were thinking
of taking on this bad boy. Confess! You’re
under the car licking your tail.’ I did not, however, take my eyes off the fox.
He was flame on snow. He was focused yet detached.
Apparently, like me, he needed a little time to
process changed circumstance. He was thinking:
1. No danger
here. She’s looking for me in the sky.
2. Damn! (His
vision of breakfast disintegrating.)
3. But I gave them my double bark warning! ‘Everybody
off the porch.’ ‘Everybody off the porch NOW! Jeesch!’
That fox was laughing all the way down the driveway,
shaking his head in amazement.
That’s what I saw. That’s what I think. That’s my
story. The search is still on for Possum #1.
