The Opossum

When I was about 6 I remember that my father shot an opossum in our back yard. When you live on a farm this is commonplace, and maybe it was because I was just raised that they were mean, but I didn't really grieve for the opossum. However, this was not just any opossum. This was a mother opossum, which had four or five little babies in her pouch.

I can remember seeing one of these babies scurrying around a large bush in our back yard. I had told my mother that I wanted to save it to which she promptly replied, "Don't you dare touch it, it might have rabies!"

For two days we would go out and just stand around on the sidelines and watch as this poor opossum slowly starved to death. Looking back it seems so awful, us standing around this poor creature taking his picture as we watched him die. I wanted so badly to do something for him but my mom was terrified that it would have some disease.

Somewhere in our house an old photo album still contains pictures of that opossum. It was from this point on that I decided that rabies or no rabies, after all, the chances that the mouse-sized opossum actually had rabies were petty slim; I would try to save anything I could.