Playing Possom

"Are you just playing possum?" asked my husband flipping the stiff animal over with a shovel.
If the possum was just faking death, it deserved an Oscar. Rigor mortis is a particularly difficult role to pull off convincingly. He noticed wounds on the possum. The dogs and I watched from the safety of the sunroom. The dogs avoided my accusing stares.

Lucky had snatched a whole hunk of bread off Asherel's plate when no one was looking later on. First possum, now bread. Our dogs were turning into wild predators.

"Do you think they were the ones that killed it?" I asked, when Arvo returned.
"I can't see Lucky killing anything," he answered, "But there were wounds on its back."
We looked at Honeybun, the dog who had survived for some time in the wild before we found her.
"I better bathe them and look for wounds," I said, "I thought I had smelled dead animal when I walked in the house yesterday."

The dogs approach a bath like a prisoner approaches death row. Heads hang, ears droop, tails down, expressions glum but resigned to their fate. Sometimes they fight, spread-eageling legs to prevent me carrying them through the door. I plopped them one at a time into the tub.

Warning to all you who have carpal tunnel syndrome- dog lifting and bathing is not on the list of recommended treatments.

So with re-strained wrists, but dogs that smelled like fresh strawberry lime, I sat down and glanced out the window. I noticed a "Critter Control" truck pull into the neighbor's driveway. I headed out to talk with him.
"Too late."
"Too late?" he asked.
"The possum's dead."
"Possum?"
"Aren't you here to catch a possum?"
"No, ma'am, I'm here for moles."
"Oh, well we found a dead possum. Do you want it?"
Now in retrospect, I wondered why I would think anyone would want a dead possum. He laughed.
"No thanks."
"Well I just thought maybe someone would want to test the possum..."
He cocked his head, probably wondering how well a possum would score. Particularly a dead one. I don't know what a possum's IQ is, but maybe Gordon Hodson has a method of testing that. He seems adept at outrageous studies. (see yesterday's blog for more on that rant.)
"No, too expensive. They almost never carry rabies. That's why we don't kill them. We catch them and relocate. Was it wounded?"
"Well, if you want to see it, my husband put it in the garbage can."
He looked at me with the same incredulity he had expressed when I asked him if he wanted to test it.
"No thanks. Did he double bag it? It is legal to throw it out in the garbage if he double bagged it."
"I think he single bagged it."
The Critter Control man gathered his mole equipment. I didn't want him leaving and sending the Possum Police, so I assured him we would double bag it.

I thought about how many times in life, rather than confront some things directly, I much prefer to play possum. If I play dead, I won't be called to action. Sometimes when you fight, you really do sustain wounds and sometimes you can even die, like our poor single bagged friend in the garbage can. What is worth fighting for...? We are studying WW1 right now in homeschool, but every time we hit a new section of history, there is some conflict that people felt worth risking their life to resolve. Which are worth dying for? Are any? On a lesser but still toxic scale, which principles are worth speaking up about? How many times do I see an ignorant or derogatory or uninformed remark pop up in facebook (sometimes even of my own making) and not comment?

"Well, good luck with the moles," I called to the Critter Control man, "Do you catch and relocate them too?"
He again threw me a glance that seemed to indicate that my IQ was not a whole lot higher than the possum's. I suspect the moles were not about to be relocated. Playing possum might be a useful trick they should learn quickly.

Ecclesiastes 3: 7,8,17-21
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace. I said to myself,
"God will bring into judgment
both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity,
a time to judge every deed." I also said to myself, "As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?"

Matthew 18:12-14
"What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

-Everything is possible with God