The Opossum

This is the story of the opossum that lived. Late tonight I was walking down the road to Wiley Hall. While passing by Finch, I saw the silhouettes of Jackie Armstrong and Andy staring into the bushes across the road.

"Just keep walking," Jackie said to me. I kept walking and noticed, in the ice plants and bushes to my right, a creature the size of a small, thin fooball. Its white fur was illuminated in the descending moon and the lamppost lights from nearby parking lots.

"He was hit by a car," Jackie said. I stepped away and the opossum stumbled onto the street, which was streaked in two places with what could have been oil, except for one spot where flesh seemed to bubble like small chunks of cranberry sauce.

The opossum slouched a few paces, slumped to its left side, hesitated, stepped forward, and sank again. "It looks like his rear left leg was dislocated from its socket," Andy said.

The headlights of a van approached; Jackie stood in front of the opossum and I raised my hand. A guy stepped out of the passenger's side and immediately knelt beside the opossum. The van veered out of sight. The guy took off his sandal and used it to nudge the back of the opossum, which wouldn't move.

"You better stay away," Andy told the guy, "you don't know if he might go crazy. If he bites you, you could get an infection worse than the swine flu. . . just kidding."

But the guy started petting the opossum, which turned its head sideways a couple times. "He's giving up," the guy said when the opossum still wouldn't move. "Most possums wouldn't let you touch them like this."

"Think we should put him out of his misery?" Andy asked.

"Is there a 24-hour public safety, where we could get a shovel?" the guy asked.

Although I didn't say so, I didn't favor killing the opposum. Maybe it could live, even without a functioning leg. I'm never sure what to do when it comes to putting an animal out of its misery.

I hesitated stepping on a beetle a couple weeks ago. It was afternoon, and I was walking up the hill by Hendricks which overlooks the field, and I noticed a beetle, half of its shiny black body pushed thin to the sidewalk and the other half wriggling. I decided there was no way it would live anything close to the life it was intended to live, so I closed my eyes and stepped on it, and then with a piece of paper picked up its still body and slid it onto the dirt on the other side of the chain-link fence. Although I was unsure if killing it was the right thing to do, I felt afterwards that maybe it could have been right.

But tonight seemed a different circumstance. For a few minutes, the opossum stood on the street staring out into the ocean, a scarlet narrow triangle slashed through its left cheek and ink black eyes, and then it began hobbling again, back into the bushes. As the opossum climbed over the crimson curb and onto the mulch, the guy put on his sandal and walked away. After I looked aside and back again, the opossum was nestled where two thick branches meet.

"Look, it's in the tree," Jackie said.

Then it began pulling itself up the branches, higher and higher until I could no longer see it.

"Think it'll be alright?" I asked.

"It looks like he'll be good," Andy said.

"He just needs some time to recuperate," Jackie said. "Like have you seen those soccer players when they injure their legs?" She held her knee as though it were broken. "They rest for a little while and then they get up again and score some goals."

Then she looked up in the tree. "Just don't get back onto the street, guy."