Opossum waddles slowly
across my backyard.
We get a lot of opossums around here. I don’t see them much during the winter. Heck, they are nocturnal, so I don’t often see them out in the bright sun. But, cutey was out there wandering around 10 am. I wish he’d turned around to face me, but as we all know, opossums are shy.
Update: March 21, 1999.
Later in the afternoon, I saw my neighbor’s cat, fur puffed up. I knew he was upset by something… something …. large. I knew it was the opossum. So, I looked out my window and saw what was scaring the neighbor’s cat.
No. Of course he’s not dead. He’s ‘playin’ possum.
I hope he’s warm today. The predicted, annual, first blizzard of spring has started.
It is interesting that you mention an opossum wandering around your backyard. I live in suburban Houston, TX and opossums are our most likely wild visitors. They travel on the cedar fences to wherever they are going. At night they drive our dogs wild. Usually they are young ones not yet mature. One night a couple of months ago my son reported a very large one in a neighbor’s tree. They seem harmless but are sometimes suspected of carrying rabies.
Mike–
I read in Wikipedia that ‘possums very rarely carry rabies due to low blood temperatures. That said, I steer clear of wild animals. They can bite. Who wants that even if they don’t have rabies?
This guy hung around, scared the neighbors cat and I got even better pictures!
We have possums of the marsupial kind in Sydney, Australia. The most common types are the brushtail possum & the ringtail possum.
Brushtail possums are very common around our house; there are plenty of gum trees and when they noisly run over our roof, at night, we jokingly refer to them as wearing gumboots.
Two spring seasons ago I planted tomatoes but unfortunately the possums ate all the fruit, even through it was fenced off.
The marsupial possum is native to Australia and is protected. It was imported into New Zealand in 1837 and is regarded as a pest there because they eat their native plants and thus indirectly, adversely affect other animals and birds. When we holidayed in NZ in 2006 we found that Kiwis hated them with a vengeance.
Our ‘possums are also marsupials. I think the Virginia Opossum is the only marsupial native to North America. (I could be wrong, but I think I learned that when I was a kid)
My Mom bought me ‘possum yarn when she was in New Zealand. I’ll knit a sweater from it soon.
I haven’t really had trouble with the opossums.
I always thought they were nocturnal.
The ones we had in our yard were creepy. While not tame, they kind of liked people, and would stare in our windows from the trees. It could be very unnerving to turn around and look out the window and see a pair of beady little eyes just looking at you.
Possum Nocturns
Spring’s first visitor,
confused by times’ change, sleepwalks
through lucia’s yard.
‘possum too early
Wrenchéd from winter slumber
Man, not sun, at fault.
very nice alan.
Now, take this!
sleepy possum snatched
too soon from winter’s slumber
wanders silently.
Lucia, you realize that dueling Haiku is worse than climate blog wars
Black cat menaces.
Opossum defends herself,
imitating death.
Spring blizzard begins.
I hope the little possum
finds a nice warm hole.
(See update above.)
creepy opossum
looking through my window frame
i am unnerved, much
Very nice lucia.
Spring’s fresh blizzard breaks
the promise of rebirth, while
Winter plays opossum.
For terry.
haiku should reference a season. terry thought the possum was scary.
which lead me to halloween. that thought will percolate in my head
as i write about other things. maybe a possum halloween haiku.
I will never forget the first time I
i saw a possum. Weird actually. We camped at Grand Haven Michigan.
High school boys. Nothing else needs to be explained. One night,
watching the traffic pass us by, I saw a giant white rat trying to cross
the road. Not a rat, a possum. it has a tiny brain we watched it for hours.
It ran to the middle of the road. Saw the car. Froze for a second and ran back
to the gutter. It did this for hours.
We watched for hours, our brains shrunk by who knows what.
We were possum. hiding from something else
Steve– I violate the seasonal aspect of haiku’s all the time. In fact, I used to regularly comment on ugly knitting patterns using haiku.
But yes, the season thing is a rule.
I dont always use the season word. I was just being mean to jerry.
It’s a nice rule. like the net in tennis.
The whole ‘rules of Haiku’ thing is funny. In America we learn 5-7-5… but apparently it was never based on ‘syllables’ in Japanese. So ‘western Haiku’ ends up wordier than expected.
This, however, apparently qualifies as Haiku:
RaidKills Bugs
Dead
Not something I would have ever guessed was a Haiku before I ran across a discussion of ‘real Haiku’. Regardless, I’m much happier making Haiku – just think if we were stuck with Sonnets as “the” form for snark!
Spring Possum Sonnet
Perhaps I will write one. There is something poetic about Lucia’s spring possum
and then the unexpected spring blizzard. Something odd in her
wandering around at daytime. hmm
haiku is probably the right form for this. … First I do taxes. then possum sonnet
may take a while