Sarah Has Spoken!

And the winner is . . . (drum roll) . . . uh . . . (more drum roll) . . . uh . . . Cut!

I can't go right into announcing the winner. Nobody does that. First you have to read some of my "stuff". And for today, I've decided to keep a promise I made weeks ago. I'm going to tell you my story about petting a wild possum.

Dee and I were building a little house out in the country. I think it was house number 3 (We've built 11) We'd bought a used motor home to live in while we built. Well, truthfully, we'd bought it to travel in, but found out it got eight miles to the gallon.

The one real trip we took in it was to visit my brother who lived in Florida at the time. We made it as far as Central Louisiana  - about 15 miles from Alexandria, where Dee was raised and his family still lives - when it broke down. For five days we spent most of the day - every day - sitting in the mechanic's shop, because every evening when we'd leave to go to Mama's house the foreman would tell us it would be ready about ten the next morning.

Someone had to taxi us back and forth, so when they dropped us off the next morning, we'd dismiss them and tell them we'd be along in a few minutes. Of course after they left we'd discover there were more complications and it wouldn't be ready for another two hours. When those two hours were up, it would be another two hours, and so on until it was time to leave for the evening again. We never made it to Florida, and didn't even get to enjoy our visit in Louisiana. It took some of the shine off of being a motor home owner, that's for sure.

But I digress . . .

One day we worked late into the evening. The porch light was on at the house we were building. Both the house and the motor home were facing the road, which left the front of the motor home in total darkness. The awning was extended and our Bar-B-Q pit was set up on the patio. We kept the cat's food on top of the pit (when it wasn't lit, of course) so the dog couldn't get it.

I headed for the motor home to get something. When I zipped around the corner into total darkness, it took a minute to sort things out. There sat our cat on top of the Bar-B-Q pit having a snack.

"Hi, baby, having a late supper?" I rubbed my hand down it's back.

Oh oh! Didn't feel like cat fur to me. Yet, in my stupor I stood there with my hand on it's back, while my eyes adjusted. A humongous possum's white face came into focus. He stared at me. I stared at him. I'm sure he was as shocked as I was when we recognized each other. He didn't hiss. He didn't move.

I pulled my hand back and excused myself and he went back to eating.I mean these kinds of things happen every day, don't they?

Wake up the drummer!

And the winner is . . . Hit it!  . . . (Drum roll) . . . Hold it. Sarah, would you like to make this announcement?

No? She worn out from checking the trash cans.

Okay. The winner is . . . wait. I gotta tell you what a bang-up job Sarah did in picking the winner. She nosed around in the trash can for several minutes before making her choice. (If she could read, I'd say this was rigged.) After carefully selecting the designated winner she headed for the bedroom. "No, wait! You gotta let me read it. You're supposed to lay it down next to the trash can the way you always do."

Under the bed. You heard me, she took it under the bed. I was a little frantic at this point, so she thought I was mad at her and no amount of coaxing would bring her out from under the bed. If I walked away, she might totally eat it, and I wouldn't know who won, except through the process of elimination.

Dee ran to the kitchen for a dog treat. Yay! That did the trick. She came out . . .but she didn't bring the slip of paper with her. So, I had to reach under with a back scratcher and pull out the mangled entry.

Okay. The winner is LOOsi GGGEE. Well, that's what it looks like. Oh, that's a tooth hole. And a little slobber. Turn it over.

And the winner is . . . (Drum Roll) . . . Lisa Grace!

Congratulations, Lisa. Your possum is in the mail.

One Week to Go!

As promised, today I'm going to tell you who is doing the drawing for the stuffed possum.

First let me tell you a little bit about her. Born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas - she was given very slim odds of survival at two weeks of age. Unable to suck, it was necessary for her caregivers to find other ways to get nourishment into her body. The fact that she's with us today speaks well of the methods employed.

Lovely red-brown hair. Striking eyes. Beautifully manicured nails, which she maintains herself. And an enthusiasm that has brought her through some tough times, Sarah is the perfect candidate for this job.  Raised in a journalistic environment, she is an authority soi-distant on all things paper-related. In fact her hobby is reaching into a trash can and choosing one particular piece of paper, which she then lays beside the trash can and leaves.

Did I mention Sarah was a dog?

A very smart dog.  She was removed from her mother's care at two weeks of age. One of a litter of fourteen, her litter-mates were dying off one or two a day. I had chosen her and named her at conception (the most dappled female of the litter, please. That she has one blue eye and one hazel eye is an unexpected bonus). I couldn't bear the thought of her dying, although I had not yet met her. So at two weeks, I drove to Oklahoma to visit my granddaughter and two great-grandchildren. And bring Sarah home to Texas.

Neither doll bottles, pet bottles nor baby bottles suited her. She'd either not get enough, or so much would come out it almost drown her. After a harrowing week of diarrhea and/or constipation and struggling to get food down, I put a saucer of milk in front of her. And pushed her nose into it.

She said "Why didn't we do this sooner. I've been hungry for a week." She lapped it down, and hasn't stopped eating since.(She prefers my dinner to hers. Her biggest weakness being a green salad. Extra onion, please.) 

That was two years ago. In the ensuing months, she chewed up an antique chair, our camera/computer cable, our printer cable, our Roland keyboard cable, Dee's HBP machine hose. Chewed holes in the sheet-rock walls and the corners off tables, chairs, and stairs. She was free. I figure she's cost us approximately $2,419.72.

In her on-going effort to offset that expense she's eliminated the need for trips to the vet to have her nails clipped. She bites them off to the perfect length. Every little bit helps.

And I'm happy to report she's given all that chewing up - for paper. She's obsessed with paper. Fetching the morning paper, carrying the mail back from the mail box and checking the trash cans on an hourly basis to be sure there's not too much paper build-up. I don't know what we'd do without her.

Sarah Palin Walding is already anticipating her role in the contest. Let's fill the trash can for her.

I've had some entries and some complaints that readers haven't been able to leave comments. (Well, that's better than complaints about the content of my posts I guess.) And I'm sorry I'm not technologically smart enough to just jump in there and fix it. But I'm working on it.

One of my FB friends put it nicely. "For all my friends who are concerned about my consumption of artificial sweetener, you'll be glad to know that it hasn't had any adverse effect on my  . . . uh . . . my . . . uh . . . thinker thingy."

A Contest! Just in time for Christmas!

Young mothers, I know you want to teach your children to love and respect all of God's creatures. Even the ones that cause you to say "Eww". A visit to "Possums Just Wanna Have Fun" would help them understand some of the mysteries of God's animal kingdom. And teach them that baby possums can be just as cute as baby bunnies. It's true, you know. They start out little and pink, just like bunnies do. In fact, I've not met a baby anything that wasn't cute.

I have an irrational fear of praying Mantises. If one ever got in my hair, I'd probably die on the spot. But a few years back, someone gave me a little matchbox and told me to open it carefully. Inside was a tiny, tiny praying Mantis. As small as a mosquito. And he was praying. I let him walk around on my desk and up and down my fingers. I think if I'd kept him - we might have bonded. (Big Grin). But I didn't know what to feed him, so I released him in the garden and hoped he'd make it. Yes, you read right. I hoped he'd make it.

Regarding possums, most of you have only seen the ugly, skinny looking creatures that roam the night looking for bugs. Okay, granted, they are gross looking. But they have the potential to be beautiful. They are cute as babies. Just as a puppy is.

I had the privilege of rescuing four puppies born to an abandoned dog. They'd never seen a human and when I approached them, they snarled and bit at me. By the time I got all four of them safely in a carrying kennel, my hands were bleeding. And they weren't very pretty either. Bony and matted. Three weeks later they were fattened up, cute and cuddly. It's amazing what a little TLC will do.

Next time you see an ugly possum, think of what he could look like with a little TLC. And if you can't imagine that - look at some of my pics of Soupy.

Now . . . for the contest. Below I've asked three questions. Go to "comments" and leave your name - and a comment if you like. But don't answer the questions there. 


Email me at  lynne@lynnewellswalding.com. Answer the questions and leave your name and a contact address. The winner will be drawn from a list of those correctly answering the questions.

Again - Leave a comment and/or your name in blog comments.
             Leave your answers and your name and contact address at my email address. 
             Easy as that.

Drawing will be held December 14. The possum will go out in the afternoon mail. In time for Christmas. The winner will be announced in this blog on December 15. I'll tell you next week what completely impartial individual will be doing the drawing. You're gonna love it!

And here are the questions:
              Where did I get Soupy?
               Where did I get Squirrel Girl?
               How did Soupy break his leg?


Get ready. Get set. Go!

Squirrels Just Wanna Have Fun, Too

Thought I'd give Soupy a little break today and talk about Squirrel Girl. Her name was originally "Shadrach" because she lived through a fire . . . and I thought she was a he!  It's not  easy to tell with a baby squirrel whose eyes aren't open yet.

I was attending a "Cereal Walk" (as we lovingly called them) in a little mountain community in Oklahoma. You may know what a "Cake Walk" is. An old fashioned money-raising pot luck supper where the numbers from 1 to "whatever" are written in a circle on the floor. Folks pay to walk around the circle to the beat of some perky song. When the music stops you stop on whatever number you've reached. The leader draws a number from a hat, and if you're on it, you get a home-made cake, baked by one of the community ladies. Great fun.

But this community evidently had a shortage of cake-baking-little-old-ladies! (And perky music.) There were some fine cakes to be won. But there were lots of boxes of "Little Debbie" cakes and even "Kellogg's Corn Flakes". We thought that was kind of amusing and started calling them Cereal Walks.

Back to the story. This particular evening, the men from the local VFD came in, still in their fire-fighting garb to grab a bit to eat. While fighting a potential forest fire they heard a squeak coming from a parched area. A baby squirrel was crying - surrounded on all sides by a grass fire. Those sweet guys rescued it and brought it to the Cereal Walk. Naturally I ended up taking it home with me. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

She smelled of fire. Her hair was parched and the end of her tail was badly burned. (She ended up losing half of her tail - which gave her a really distinctive look.) Her eyes weren't open yet and she craved the warmth of a human's touch.

So I took her to bed with me, keeping her covered with my hand. One night she became extremely restless. After chasing her from one end of the bed to the other (under the covers) I finally turned on the light on my end table. She scrambled up on my chest and stared at me with her brand-new eyes. I was the first thing she ever saw. I was "Mama".

Well, Mama and Pappa had already made arrangements to go to a huge evangelistic conference in Beaumont. What to do with Shadrach/Squirrel Girl? She required constant care. So . . . I took her along. She had her own little bag, packed with bedding, medicines, two eyedroppers, powdered squirrel milk, and water. I didn't want to be caught in any situation where I couldn't care for "the baby".

During the day and at the motel it was no challenge. But I spent three long evenings at this conference - held in a huge Colosseum - with her in my purse. I was panicky she'd get out. She'd have caused chaos in that crowd, running over ladies' feet. And there was no doubt in my mind, I'd never find her again if that happened.

So, I kept my purse on my lap, with my hand stuck in it. Holding a sleeping squirrel. The large man to my left eyed me suspiciously. And often. He probably thought I had a weapon in my purse. I was afraid if I confessed to him what it was, he'd complain and I'd be thrown out. So I just smiled innocently when he cast a wary glance my way. Just your everyday ditsy woman.

I think it's safe to assume that Squirrel-Girl is the only squirrel in the world to have ever attended a three day evangelistic conference - even if she did sleep through the whole thing.

Possum Play Dates

I can only think of two of God's living creatures I could kill without blinking an eye. One's a roach and the other's a mosquito. Rats, mice, moles, snakes and spiders (excepting, of course, black widows and brown recluses) fall under the heading of "things I would rather not cohabit with, and I'll be glad to escort them from the premises rather than kill them". Sometimes they have to be escorted with a great deal of finese. I coax spiders onto a piece of paper and throw them out. I grab daddy-long-legs by one leg and toss them out. Rats . . . well, I've never had the pleasure. I'm not sure how I'd handle it.

But that's just me. And I'm aware that there aren't too many like me. When I mention having raised possums, I get a lot of "eew"s. Especially from women.

I had two ladies drop in to visit me one day. While we sat and talked a spider crawled up the wall behind me. One lady screamed. My husband ran to the rescue, took off his shoe and did the poor creature in. (I held a memorial for it that evening . . . kidding.) The other lady excused herself to go to the bathroom. She screamed and came running back out, pointing toward the door. "A frog! A frog!"

We live in the country, so sometimes we see creatures in the house that city folk don't. But I swear, this is the first time, in all of my life, I've found a frog inside my house. There sat a little brown tree frog on the toilet seat, just as happy as a dead hog in the sunshine. I scooped it up in my hand and took it to the back door. As I passed through the living room, the ladies were collecting their purses and heading for the front door.

I put the little fellow outside on a tree, came back in, washed my hands, and walked outside to say good-bye. They were already in the car with the doors shut and windows up. I motioned for one to roll her window down, and she mouthed the words, "Where's the frog?"

Golly Gee! They haven't been back.

I said all that to say this. I wonder what would have happened had Soupy decided to take a stroll through the living room about that time?

Soupy had a friend. I met a lady who, like me, loves possums. She had one named Opie. He had to have been the most spoiled possum ever to live. He had a cage I think must have been designed for a tiger. She kept it at her place of business, so he could accompany her to work every day.  He traveled to and from work with her in a back-pack. He went on vacations. Been to Vegas among other places. Definitely more well-traveled than Soupy (or me).

I took Soupy by to visit a time or two. And I got Amy's permission to publish her picture with Opie. (See the bottom of the page.) Remember I promised to prove to you that all possums do not look alike. Notice that Opie and Soupy have very different features. I promise you, to this day, I could pick Soupy out of a passel of possums. And I'm sure Amy could do the same with Opie.

I heard that "Eewww!" Knock it off.

Poor Baby!

Soupy was so tiny when I brought him home, I didn't see how he could possibly be any bother. Right!

I fed him and set my clock for a couple of hours hence, to feed him again. Then I put him in a warm box with lots of rags to cuddle in. I put the box in the shower stall - just in case he got out and had to do his business. More rags in the shower, so if he left the box, he could find another place to cuddle. I closed the glass doors on the shower and went to bed confident he could get into no trouble.

When I went back for his first feeding, he was in the box, snug as a bug. Next feeding, same thing.

Then came morning. I went to his box, expecting to find a toasty warm possum, possibly with a little mess in the box. What I found was an empty box. And an empty shower stall. And as far as I could tell, an empty bathroom.

Panic!

I checked every nook and cranny in the bathroom for possible escape routes. Nothing. I screamed for help. Dee came running. We searched the house. But Soupy was obviously gone. I was in tears. Of course, I was checking close to the floor. He was a baby. How could he possibly be up high?

Never underestimate a possum, regardless of how young. I stood in the bathroom and turned in a circle. Suddenly I was eye to eye with Soupy, peering out at me from the towel  shelf over the commode.

There was no way out of the shower stall except to shimmy the thin rubber gasket around the door. Then do a balancing act across the slick aluminum top of the shower door frame to the rough cedar bathroom door frame. Across about two feet of sheet-rocked wall and onto the shelf. Hey . . . I don't know. He was a regular Houdini.

I started putting his box on it's side, in the bathroom, with the commode lid down (so he wouldn't flush himself) and the shower door open. He decided the shower stall was his bathroom. We laid newspapers in it at night and Voila! he was potty trained. Never slipped up. Ever.

So, we gave him the run of the house at night. Not really a good idea! But possums like to poke around at night and sleep though the day. So we gave it a try. What harm could he do? <G> We "Soupy-proofed" the house each night at bedtime.

One night we heard a thump. He was in front of the dryer when we ran into the laundry room - and limping. I'd made the mistake of putting a tall basket of dirty clothes next to the dryer. The best we could figure was; he'd climbed up the basket to the top of the dryer, tried to go back down the slick front of the dryer . . . and plunged to the floor.

Imagine how guilty I felt when his limp didn't go away. I took him to the vet where an x-ray revealed he had a broken leg. I'm telling you all this to my shame, because had he not been so doggone cute, and had I not been such a mushy-hearted fool, I'd have built an outdoor cage for him and tried harder to not imprint him. That's why it's not a good idea to try to raise one. Even the best intentioned person - if they are tenderhearted and uneducated on the species - will probably go wrong.

Fortunately, I lived in a state where it was legal to harbor possums, so I was able to find a vet with "possum-experience". It cost hundreds of dollars to have his leg operated on and set. And there was a five-week period when he had to wear a cast on his leg. I started hearing horror stories from every direction about wild animals who'd chewed their own leg off to escape a cast. SO - for five weeks, I slept on the floor with my hand in his "cave" so I'd know if he started chewing. Not my favorite five weeks!

And, we bonded. Oh, did we bond.

In the wild, possums are loners. They don't live in families, except for the female and her young, and then only until they're able to go off on their own.

Unlike dogs and cats, possum mamas don't worry a lot about their young. Mama says to the kids, "Keep up, because if you get lost, I'm not coming to look for you." Which might be why people are constantly finding orphaned possums.

So now you know why I ended up raising my second possum to adulthood and beyond. Soupy led a pretty good life -  by possum standards.

Next week I'm going to tell you about Soupy's play dates! If you think all possums look alike, you're in for a surprise!

Possum in a Bucket

"Mom, Don has a baby possum in a bucket down at his store. And it's scared to death."

Oh no! Joker Don and his red-neck friends.

I flew into action. Snatched up my smallest animal cage. Packed a bag of warm milk, eyedropper, rags and paper towels. Grabbed my Super-Woman cape and put it on as I ran to the car. (Haven't perfected the art of flying yet.) It was cold. I should have brought more warm rags.

I skidded up to the door of Don's store and took a deep breath. Walking in with all the aplomb of a potential customer, I looked around until I saw the bucket. "Whatcha got in the bucket, Don?"

He stuck it up in my face, expecting me to jump and scream. Inside, the poor little fellow tried to hide behind a single clump of leaves.

"Oh, isn't that sweet. Whatcha going to do with it?"

"I don't know, let it loose later, I guess."

There was no way the baby would have survived on it's own. It had already been too long without food, considering Don brought it in that morning and it was nearly noon.

"How about I take it off your hands?"

"Yeah, I guess I've had all the fun I'm going to get out of it."

I snatched it out of the bucket and was out the door before Don could change his mind. I'd left the heater on in the car. I unveiled the milk. Of course, just like Opie, he didn't want any part of that hard glass eyedropper. But I've never had any luck with the bottles made for feeding orphaned animals. They either can't get anything out of it, or it comes out so fast they could drown. With an eyedropper I'm able to release exactly the amount I want. In the beginning they lick it off their lips (do possums have lips?) And within a day or two they don't care how hard it is, they jam it down their mouths and go for it.

He drank his fill and I put him under my sweater, against my warm skin where he promptly fell fast asleep. Phooey on the cage. This guy needed some one-on-one. I decided to call him Soupy (short for Marsupial).

I had every intention of keeping him only until he could survive in the wild. The criteria being: approximately fifteen inches in length - not including the tail. And having the ability to catch his own insects. And, oh yes, no imprinting allowed. :-) I had to keep our relationship impersonal. Okay, I can do that.

Soupy had different ideas about where he would spend the rest of his life. (He told me in confidence that road-kill was not his idea of good eatin'.) Mushrooms, avocado, broccoli, lemon yogart. Lots of lemon yogurt. Now that's good eatin'!

I made him follow his National Opossum Society Diet for the most part. Oh well, it's still better than road-kill.


Check out the latest pics, below!

Born to be Free

Opie accompanied me to work every day. I had a dream job. A little office in the country, where I showed up in the morning to see the workers off . . . and spent the rest of the day alone, waiting for the phone to ring. (It seldom did. I felt like the Maytag repairman.) I had lots of time to entertain Opie. (And watch her sleep).

I captured June-bugs and grasshoppers for her discriminating palate. She'd hold them - a wing in each little hand. (Possums have opposable thumbs, so they can grab things a lot like a human would.) Then she'd chomp the body. I had to turn my head - I felt sorry for the bugs. We went for long walks at dusk. When she was ready to call in a day, she'd climb up my leg. We became quite close.

I didn't realize what a problem that would be. When it came time to release her - she refused to leave. I took her out in the woods near a little creek, thinking it would be the ideal place for a possum to live. Putting her on the ground, I turned to run. Only to feel her catch a hold on my jeans and climb up. (They can move pretty fast when they want to.) I could have outsmarted her and gotten away. But she was so completely imprinted. With that kind of attachment to me, could she make it on her own? I wasn't willing to gamble with her life. I'd know the next time, to keep my association with wildlife a little less personal.

So she became a permanent resident. The cats hissed at her (biggest rat they'd ever seen) and the dog wasn't comfortable in her company. Used her for a fire hydrant once. So I took her most places with me. She slept under my jacket clinging to my shoulder. One day, standing in line at the hardware store, Opie got a little too comfortable. In a deep sleep, she released her grip on my clothing and fell from under my jacket.

Plop!

Right at the feet of the little blue haired old lady standing behind me. Opie looked around, stunned. (Looking a lot like a dazed, long-haired rat.) The lady screamed. I thought she was going to faint. I scooped Opie up, put my intended purchases down, and made a hasty exit. Hoping there was another hardware store in town I could patronize in the future.

Thus began my life-long love affair with opossums. Opie was the first in a long line. I've learned to be careful to not imprint them. Until . . . Soupy came along. I think HE imprinted ME.

But more about him later. There've been many foster-possums in my life who need their fifteen minutes of fame, first. Like the three babes delivered to me by a well-meaning neighbor. I was getting ready to make a trip to Houston and there was no room at the Inn (rehab center). So, I made a trip to Houston with three baby possums in a bird cage. And an extra carrying case full of dried possum-mother's milk, eyedroppers, rags and cleaning supplies. Please don't ask me who milks the mother possums. I've wondered that myself.

What most people don't realize about opossums is -  they're nearly defenseless. They'll hiss and show their teeth. (Fifty of them. More than any other mammal. Making them look really fierce.) If that doesn't work, they run. If all else fails, they play dead. That's it! They have no other fiendish plans up their sleeves. It makes them quite helpless against their many natural enemies.

Possums are one of the least likely of all wildlife to carry the rabies virus. Of course, I'd never suggest picking up a wild possum. In fear, it may bite. But it won't jump on you. So please don't launch an attack on such a helpless creature. If one is in your space, be calm. Get someone to help you herd it into its space. It'll be as glad to go as you are to see it go.

I accidentally reached out and touched a wild possum once. But that's another story . . . for another day.

Once upon a time . . .

. . . near Hawkins, Texas in 1981, I was driving down the country road that ran in front of our place. On my way to get some supplies from the hardware store for my husband, Dee, I passed a dead opossum. It always saddens me to see an animal killed on the road. But it was obviously beyond help . . . so, I drove on by.

Over an hour later, returning from the store, I passed the same spot. There was now a dead possum and seven baby possums. All flattened. It was then I realized that possums have pouches.The babies had come out of the pouch in search of food, since their mother's supply had stopped. And someone had deliberately run over each and every one of them. Perhaps they thought it was kinder than letting them starve. Not me . . . I'd have picked up every last one and taken them home.

I pulled off the road and had a good cry. Then it struck me. If there were seven babies on the road, might there be more left in the pouch? I did something unimaginable to me at the time, but unavoidable, as far as I could figure. I put my hand into the dead mother's pouch and felt around. I discovered one baby still clinging to Mama's teet. It was about the size of a small bottle of White-Out. I wrapped my hand around it firmly and began tugging. The little fellow didn't want to let go.

I won the game of tug-o-war and out he popped. None too happy to see me.

I rushed him home. Knowing nothing about possums, I reasoned any kind of care would be better than nothing. I diluted and warmed some evaporated milk and filled an eye dropper. For starters I wet his mouth with the milk, because he wanted nothing to do with that hard glass eyedropper. (He was used to sucking on a long, almost string-like source of nourishment.) Licking his lips he partook of an entire eyedropper-full before he succumbed to exhaustion.

While he slept, nuzzled in the warm nest I'd built (a box of rags setting on top of a heating pad on the lowest setting), I frantically called everyone I knew. No one knew anything about nurturing a possum. Not even the vet. I was on my own.

[I've learned since, from the National Opposum Society (opossums.org), that they need a very specific diet. If you've found an orphaned possum, go there immediately. You can catch up to me later!]

We discussed names. Being a pastor, naturally Dee came up with something Scriptural. Opossum Paul - saved on the road to Hawkins. He became "Opie". (A side note: we later discovered Opie had a pouch, so "his" official name was changed to Opossum Paulette.)

Tune in  later for more of the continuing sage of Opossum Paulette. (I've gotta dig up some pics!)