Another night visitor
Tuesday, November 28, 2006: About midnight, as I was reading in bed and thinking about turning off the light, I heard a chunk sound in the backyard. Elly had fallen asleep and didn’t hear it. I figured our raccoon friend was back for another visit and went downstairs to have a peek.
I parted the vertical blind on our kitchen door slightly, expecting to see the sunflower chip lid raised up, but it wasn’t. Nor were the other two storage can lids. I switched on the backyard light, looked around, and saw a large opossum snuffling about in the grass. It was a big one. I’m not sure how large they really get, so “huge” might not be accurate. I think his tail alone was 16 inches long, though. I wasn’t able to get a good picture because of the distance and the low light, but here is what I got.
The opossum is near the squirrel peanut feeder at the bottom of our bird feeder pole. I guess the sound I heard was the opossum looking into the peanut feeder (which must have been empty). Not to be deterred, it scoured our backyard locating peanuts the squirrels had buried here and there in the grass. I watched it doing this for a good ten minutes. It found quite a few. I don’t think this was its first peanut hunt on our premises.
It’s a shame I couldn’t get a better picture. They have such odd looking faces, strikingly white and flat, and at a low angle to the ground.
The backyard light didn’t bother the opossum when it was turned it on. We’ve seen opossums in our yard before. One startled the heck out of Elly when we walked up on our front porch after dark one time. It was rummaging in a trash bag and turned around and hissed at us before trotting off.
I was struck by the thought, while watching the critter, that we see so little of what goes on even a few steps outside our own doors. It was incongruous to see such an odd creature, almost like an alien being, perfectly at home in a place so seemingly familiar to us. I thought of all the time we’ve spent in the backyard, whether doing yard work, or reading, or playing with Samba, never stopping to consider who else might perceive our yard as home territory.