Ears are one of those body parts that strike us as funny–silly, floppy pieces of boneless flesh of infinite varied designs, colors, and contours. All the actual hearing hardware is deep in the ear canal, so you get the idea we could do without these things. Yet we know to cup our hand into an extension of the ear when we need to hear better. We find that the ear is a wonderful place to hang ornaments. And which of us hasn’t come to appreciate this delicate thing gazing back at us from our lover’s pillow?
“Aaaahhhhh!” Jamal whooped. His head popped back out through the shirt hole. Every cell in his body seemed to leap away from the frightful thing he’d seen. And right after his scream came the weird, otherworldly yodel of a young possum–“Yeehhhayk!”– disturbed from his sleep, his mouth opened so wide it was all Jamal had seen from his side of the cotton mesh T-shirt: two beautiful triangles of pink mouth, edged with sharp, tiny teeth, yelling like E.T. discovered by the little sister. He lounged on a spindly branch, hanging on with one humanoid hand, one nonhumanoid foot, and one muscular prehensile tail. Funny little ears tipped in black, he glared at us all and then relaxed as we backed off, this lovely creature in this flickering light.
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Opossums have a very short life span, usually two years in the wild. A solitary, originally arboreal species, it has adapted to life on the woodland floor, puttering about awkwardly on five-fingered paws. The rear set includes unclawed, opposable thumbs. Most of us have heard of the possum’s unique defense against imminent attack: playing dead. Less well known is the actor’s dedication to the part. In Grzimek’s Encyclopedia of Mammals Patricia Major says the animal “lies on its side…its tail rolled up, mouth and eyes gaping open, hands and feet partially closed as though they were about to seize hold of something. It almost seems as if the animal actually knows what a dead opossum looks like.” Major distinguishes the opossum’s routine from the “freeze” technique many animals use to avoid being noticed. Possums apparently have a physiological switch that turns off any potential “live” signals that might inspire attack. “The opossum that revives needs to recuperate a while before continuing on its way,” Major notes.
I guessed this: someone had seen the harmless creature squeeze its way under a garbage lid to munch on someone’s discarded cauliflower leaves, maybe, and mistook it for a huge rat. And with a sense of urgency and purpose not unlike that felt by Klansmen and vigilantes everywhere, and having too much time and not enough smarts, doused the bin with gas and struck it afire. Later, my friend Jerry told me that the Fire Department had responded the night before to a call about a trash bin on fire on Pensacola Street.
