Useless Knowlege of the Day (plus a story)

The Opossum is noted for its reaction to threats, which is to feign death. This is the genesis of the term "playing possum,” which is used to describe an attempt to pretend to be dead or injured.

In the case of the opossum, the reaction is involuntary, as it is triggered by extreme fear.

The Opossum should is not a docile animal as it will respond ferociously, hissing, screeching, and showing its teeth. However, with enough stimulation, the opossum will enter a near coma, which can last up to four hours. It lies on its side, mouth and eyes open, tongue hanging out, emitting both a green fluid from its anus and an odor putrid to most predators. Besides discouraging animals who eat live prey, playing possum also convinces some large animals that the opossum is no threat to their young.

This is not only a useless knowledge of the day post but also the backdrop for a story I'm about to unfold.

Scratchy has a friend and our two families have become close. We will call the mother of Scratchy's friend Mrs. C. Now Mrs. C is your typical Midwestern mom that takes care of the house while the husband is away on business.

Their home like ours backs up to an undeveloped land and there is plenty of fauna that inhabits these areas. Now, Mrs. C's family has a pet dog that we will call Lucky. One evening a few years back while the husband was away Mrs. C hears Lucky outside barking violently.

Mrs. C eventually goes out to see what's going on with Lucky and to shut him up so that the neighbors don't call the cops. Mrs. C can't easily find Lucky but eventually she hears him again and tracks him down. Apparently, Lucky is under the rear porch barking like his life depends on it and even after several attempts she can't get Lucky to get out from under the porch. She goes inside to get a flashlight and heads back outside.

Lucky is still barking and she opens the trap door and heads under the porch. She hears Lucky at the far end of the porch and shines a light at him while yelling at him to get out from under the porch. She shines the light around and lo and behold; the light hits the eyes of an opossum that is now staring right at her and is showing its fangs and hissing violently. She turns right around and heads out yelling as she does this. Of course, now Lucky has to try to save the day so he chases out the opossum right after Mrs. C. The poor beast is being chased by Lucky and heads for any possible sign of freedom, which of course means to head into the house right after Mrs. C who has left the door wall open.

Lucky now is in hot pursuit of the opossum. Mrs. C seeing that she is being chassed heads for high ground and is screaming at the top of her lungs. The opossum tries to flee but is cornered and its only course of action is to "play possum.” As you may have read right above when an opossum is cornered, it lies on its side, emitting both a green fluid from its anus and a putrid odor. This of course does not stop our hero Lucky. Lucky seeing that this is the moment to pounce latches on to the poor possum and starts to shake the beast as hard as he can.

Remember the part about the green fluid from the anus... well this coupled with the now bleeding possum start to be sprayed all around the house caused by the shaking that Lucky is causing. Lucky eventually relinquishes its vice like grip on the opossum as the neighbors come charging into the house thinking that there must be some sort of violent crime going on.

The opossum now is lying still on the ground but no one knows if it is alive or dead. The heroic neighbor goes into the garage and gets a snow shovel and a garbage can to scoop up the vermin and relocate him to the nature preserve. The house is a mess from the blood, guts and green anus stuff. They said to us that they had to get the carpeting steam cleaned, as they could not get them cleaned and smelling as if they used to any other way. By the way, Lucky also had to get a good cleaning as he had opossum stuff and mud from under the house all in his coat.

So, the moral of the story is if your faced by something playing possum be careful as they may cause a big stink in your life.