Storms bring neighbors together. So do opossums.
The hound and I were walking the neighborhood's snowy roads after the first winter storm when the hound suddenly froze and went into alert mode: tail straight, nose focused, paw up. Usually this means a fox or coyote and disintegrates into barking and leash-pulling and chaos, but in this case, he seemed flummoxed – mystified rather than crazed. He just stood there, pointing, his nose twitching like it was electric.
Then I spotted the opossum, perfectly still, about two feet away, sitting up upright between the neighbor’s fence and the berm of snow left by the plow.
To be clear, it was upright, as if it had just stopped to chat with someone. It looked straight ahead with its teeth slightly barred, its eyes open and its naked tail strung out behind. It was perfectly still. In fact, still doesn’t begin to describe it. I saw no evidence of breathing. It was as if it had frozen to death in place. I imagined it seeking shelter by the snow bank and then getting snowed under by the plow and freezing to death? But then how would it have been uncovered?
I’ve seen plenty of possums on the Cape, both living and roadkill. On a spring night, one wandered onto my deck and sat staring through the slider at the meeting in my living room. On the Cape, they are technically the Virginia opossum, a marsupial that’s pretty common in the United States, according to the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
Opossums can climb, swim and have a tail able to grasp tree branches. They have 50 teeth, more than any other land mammal on this continent. They don’t hibernate, which would explain why this one was out wandering around in a foot of snow. Sadly, it’s apparently a myth that they eat ticks. They do like to eat lots of other things, including garbage, pet food, and even chickens. Good news: They rarely contract rabies; scientists think their body temperature might be too low to support the virus.
And they really do play opossum. When scared, their bodies are able to enter an involuntary coma-like state that lasts minutes up to hours. And during that time, they give off a stench that makes them even smell dead.
Little wonder the hound didn’t know what to do. He gave a couple of tentative sniffs, backed up, and then turned his attention to the other side of the fence. I was relieved, since I worried the possum might swing around and bite or scratch him. But the opossum never moved no matter how close the hound got.
It must be dead, I thought. Because if it were playing dead, wouldn’t it have plopped over and be horizontal, not sitting upright like it was stuffed?
I snapped a photo, then walked home. I texted the photo to my daughter who works in animal welfare. “He’s not dead,” she said. “He’ll be gone if you go back.” So I hopped in the car, drove back the ½ mile or so, and sure enough, no possum. He had fooled me and the hound. And it turns out opossums do sometimes freeze in place like rabbits – not necessarily lying down.
So how did this involve the neighbors?About 30 yards past the opossum, I had run into a fellow dog-walker who I see quite a bit. This time she was with her husband whom I’d only met briefly and never really talked to. We chatted momentarily, I alerted them about the opossum, and we all continued merrily on our way and did not see each other again during the rest of the ridiculous snowmageddon winter.
Fast forward to April.
The snow is gone. The sun is shining. I’m in the yard cleaning up – this spring’s major chore for everyone on the Cape. The same dog-walking neighbors stroll by – the first time we have seen each other since the opossum episode. They stop and remark about the opossum, telling me it was gone in the few minutes it took them to walk to the spot.We happily stood in the sun, chatting about the weather and our dogs, and the neighborhood and the Cape. And in the process, we discover that decades ago, the husband’s father was my veterinarian.
Such a Cape Cod moment. And yet it always surprises me when we turn out to be interconnected like one small town. Sometimes it just takes a storm, or an opossum, to re-discover it.
