Possums Are Just Another Critter

We have always been “critter” people. Throughout our 63-plus years of marriage we have pampered dogs, cats, a squirrel and various other forms of wildlife.

The squirrel, “Scamper Gray,” was found on my parents’ farm in the Cove and raised on baby formula. He was a summer’s full of fuzzy-tailed enjoyment for our children. Scamper dined royally on cashews and breakfast cereal and spent his nights in a doll baby buggy in our daughter’s room. At times he would crawl up one leg, bury a cashew in the back of my blouse, and exit via the other leg. He rode the handlebars of our son’s tricycle and put up with tons of affection.

The little fellow was a total joy but eventually reached sexual maturity and headed for the woods near our home. On rare occasions, he would come back for a brief visit but never again allowed a human cuddle.

On these cold winter days, as the squirrels enjoy our bird feeders overladen with sunflower seeds, we still think of our beloved pet. We assume Scamper may be the great- great-great- (and then some) grandfather of these bushy tailed rats.

Warm summer evenings, when the crickets and katydids chatter and daylight lingers for hours, we love to sit in the backyard. There, we enjoy the deer munching apples from the neighbor’s tree, and watch white-tailed bunnies hopping through the gardens.

Around a year ago, we befriended a possum, or opossum, whichever you prefer. Certainly not the most handsome of God’s creatures, possums play a very important role in the ecosystem. They will eat anything from road kill to ticks and they eat a lot of those. One possum can eat up to 5,000 ticks a year.

We soon became attached to our marsupial critter and quickly named him or her, (I’m sure it knows the difference) “Pogo.” Each evening produced a dishful of delicacies.

In the book “Charlotte’s Web” by E. B. White, there are numerous descriptions of meals fed to Wilbur the pig. For instance: Breakfast was skim milk, crusts, middlings, bits of doughnuts, wheat cakes with drops of maple syrup sticking to them, potato skins, leftover custard pudding with raisins, and bits of Shredded Wheat.

Menus for Wilbur continue throughout this delightful story. I used to read it to my children and it always brought back memories of growing up on the farm where one of my chores was to carry bits and bites from dinner to the slop bucket located in the back cellar of our old brick house. The slop bucket contained fixings for a luscious swine’s dinner.

Feeding Pogo has again brought back this memory. On occasion we go out for breakfast and our backyard pet gets treated to leftover hashbrowns, toast crusts, bits of scrambled egg, a small bite of sausage, or even a slice of bacon.

Cleaning the refrigerator, enhances Pogo’s taste buds. Leftover beans from last night’s dinner are topped with a dollop of “too old” sour cream. A spoonful of jelly adds flavor to the plate scrapings. If the milk gets too old, no problem, the possum can deal quite well with outdated commodities.

But even a possum has its dietary limits. One night I cooked an overabundance of spaghetti for the amount of sauce. Not wanting it to be wasted, I threw a handful into Pogo’s dinner dish who promptly threw it onto the sidewalk. No naked spaghetti for this guy.

Unless you have a very profound reason for getting rid of possums in your yard, consider them as friends and do what you can to make their lives easier.

Our Pogo a/k/as “the critter” has been a delight and we enjoy watching him dine on cold winter evenings. Pogo is just another furry animal always welcome at the Williams’ house.