My neighbor met me in the driveway, I presumed, early for our planned kitten visit. As I launched into my kitten story, she politely stopped me. She could no longer bring her son in to play with them. Had I seen her text about the opposum? No, but I had seen a dead opossum in the center of the road on the street crossing ours. She had spotted it while walking her puppy and thought that the expired creature was giving birth. She was going to gather the whole mess and take it to a local wildlife rescue center. Did I have a bigger box? That was when I noticed the box and the teal dish gloves in her hands.
I might. And I’ll help you. I blew into the house, grabbed a pair of recently laundered garden gloves and a box that had contained paper towels. Not ideal in shape, but unfortunately, the only other option. Back in the driveway, my neighbor said she would drive down the street and load it into the back of her car so that her son would not see it. I said I’d meet her there and started walking. As her car passed me on the way, I broke into a run. A brilliant bluebird burst from a nearby tree and flew ahead of me like a herald announcing my arrival.
Embroiled as I was in the dark, urgent emotion of our rescue operation, my heart leaped with joy at the sight of the bird. The scene of the opossum accident was a frightful amalgam of death and new life, all gore. We were, of course, mistaken in thinking the small opposums were being born. They were infants nestled within their mother’s marsupial pouch. We slid the corpse with the young live opposums into the box before loading it into the car. As we worked, a woman driving a long white van full of small children slowed and rolled down the window.
What is it? She had a heavy Eastern European accent. An opossum, we answered. Be careful, she warned, and drove on.