Soupy and Friends

I am a very bad girl.

Try as I may, I cannot write a post every week with any kind of consistency. The Christmas Holidays and the New Year blew me out of the water and I'm just now catching up. But Soupy and Friends don't seem to mind. They have stories enough to tell to last me into the next millennium.

I guess by now, all of you have heard of Heidi the Cross-Eyed Opossum. Living in a zoo in Germany, her U-tube image has made her the darling of the critter-loving world. It has not made me love her any less, (In fact, I wrote her a love letter just yesterday), but the truth is . . . Heidi's an impostor. Oh yeah, you heard me right. I.M.P.O.S.T.O.R. I doubt it was her idea to try to dupe the cyber-space crowd, but nonetheless, I suspect a little hanky panky on someone's part.

You see, I'm fairly well-versed on opossums. And one of the things I have learned over the years is . . . overeating and the resulting excess poundage makes a possum look cross-eyed, because the outside white of it's eyes (which is unseen in a trim possum) bulges out. (It's called a fat deposit). It doesn't make the possum cross-eyed, but, for all the world, it LOOKS cross-eyed. A healthy, trim possum has two black buttons for eyes.

Now, look at Heidi's picture. And compare it with Soupy. Soupy was borderline overweight, and you could see a little  bit of the whites of his eyes. But Heidi's eyes look like they're going to bulge out of her sweet little face. I just hope the powers that be at the zoo she resides in will watch her diet closely.

How a wild possum got overweight is a weighty question. (Pardon the pun) It's possible she found a really cool place to eat where someone tossed lots of forbidden goodies and she reported there every night. She sure didn't get fat on roadkill. Unless she lived on a very dangerous curve in a busy road. (In which case she's lucky she wasn't road kill herself.)

Most people don't have a clue as to what a possum should eat. Actually, the recommendations have changed a time or two since I raised my first possum. The one thing that remains constant is they need fruit and veggies to prevent rickets. I suppose a bug consists mostly of veggies - and that's their most common fare. But given the chance they'd exist on fried chicken and fresh mushrooms with a side of lemon yogurt.

I taught Soupy a trick. Well, not really. Possums are sweet and cute and good-natured, but trainable . . . not so much. I found out quite by accident he loved mushrooms. He'd usually stand in front of (or in the middle of) his food dish and eat. But if I gave him a mushroom, he'd snatch it up, look from side to side, like someone might take it from him, and make a beeline for his bed. So, I couldn't resist telling people he was trained. I'd give him a mushroom and say "Take it to your bed." Off he'd go - a man on a mission - straight to his bed. It was very impressive, but believe me, if I'd said "stay" he'd have still taken off for his bed, full speed ahead.