More Tales of Sacramento at Night

Last night, I arrived home to find my dog, Sparky, snuffling excitedly in an unusually dull corner of the back yard. Sparky had discovered the curled, bedraggled body of a young but dead possum. The possum looked pretty loathesome, like he had fallen out of an Ugly Tree and hit every branch on the way down, before smashing his head on a rock. I shooed Sparky away and used paper towel roll tubes to put the limp body into a plastic grocery sack. But wait! - did the bag move? - yes indeed! It turned out the dazed possum was merely 'playing possum', and he was still very much alive! I retreated upstairs, and perched myself on top of the clothes dryer. I shined a flashlight out the window at the unkempt critter, who by this time had scrambled upwards from the ground and was balanced uncomfortably on a fence top. Every time the scrawny possum shifted his balance or swivelled an ear, I bounced up and down on the clothes dryer and shouted like a banshee: "Ugly! Ugly!"

There are quite a few possums in the neighborhood: possums have nearly blundered into Sparky and myself on our nighttime sojourns around the neighborhood. Last Christmas, we discovered there are raccoons in the neighborhood as well, which surprised me, in urban Sacramento not far from downtown. Still, something has to be done about making the possums more - presentable.