The Wonder of Half-Baked Creatures

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

“So let us join tails and teeth in celebration of the possum, the poster child for the beauty of what is; and ask the Designer to lend us wisdom in the matter of seeing miracles clearly all around us; including, unbelievably but truly, in the two incredible creatures hissing and snarling nasally on the fence above the garbage can. And so: amen.“ Brian Doyle The Book of Uncommon Prayer

Last winter I pulled on a heavy sweater and headed to the back door to fetch some wood for the fireplace. Our back door is old and sticks a little and so I had to rattle the handle and push hard to get it open. As the door banged open into the covered alcove where we keep our firewood, the light from the mud room spilled on what appeared to be a possum, which had apparently decided the best place to return to its divine possum maker was right in front of our woodpile. I jumped and shouted something that would probably need to be bleeped on TV and stepped back into the house. I told my husband about what I’d found by the woodpile. But when I opened the door to show him the possum, it was gone. Yes, the creature had been startled by my unexpected appearance and had fallen down into its defensive mechanism called thanatosis, or what folks call playing-possum.

A opossum is the only marsupial native to North America. It’s a strange nocturnal creature with grey fur, hairless tail and a pointy snout. They prefer to dine on ticks and other harmful insects and critters, making them very helpful in keeping illnesses like Lyme in check. And yet, I’ve always imagined that when The Baker was cooking up all the animals, someone rang the celestial doorbell, causing the opossum to be pulled out of the oven only half-baked. I’ve actually heard people (who generally love and are thrilled by all wildlife) say that opossums are pretty much butt ugly. And yet, I would imagine that a mamma possum thinks that her possum babies are utterly adorable, and the daddy possum thinks that the mamma possum is totally the-bee’s-knees-cute. I mean who’s to say and by what measuring stick do we judge what is beautiful and not so much. I would imagine people look pretty unusual to lots of critters…walking around like we do on two feet, with a flat-ish face, no tail or hooves or trunk or feathers or scales.

How things look all depends upon where you stand.