Run, Possum, run!

Riddle: "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
Answer: "To show the possum that it could be done."

It has been unusually warm here in New Berlin, Wisconsin, the past few days, warm enough, in fact, completely to melt a hefty snow we got ten days ago. So yesterday morning I opened the window-blinds in on one side of the house and saw to my surprise a possum walking alongside my house. Perhaps the melt made it attractive for the possum to forage for food in the early morning's light—btw, that's probably the only time one is likely to see the words "attractive" and "possum" in the same sentence; is their visage not proof that God has a sense of humor, or a mean streak? Anyway, this bulky possum waddled towards the front of my house. I went and got my son, eager to show him the thing, and brought him to the front window of our house, which faces the street. The possum came into view from the side of the house, crossed our front lawn, and lumbered towards the street.

"See that, son? That's a possum. It looks like an overgrown rat. Oh, he's going to cross the street." The possum took one, two, three steps onto the street.

At that very moment a car—I do not lie—came tearing around a curve in the street, going faster than cars usually do in the morning. The possum—whom God neither gifted with intelligence—decided that the twenty-or-so steps to cross the street was safer than the three or four it would take to come back to our side. He bolted. "Oh, no! Run, possum, run!"

S-C-R-E-E-C-H!

The car halted, just missing the possum's tail, as it darted under the bushes by the house across the street. The driver of the car was terrified, then furious. After a moment, he started forward.

For my part, I was relieved. After all, my son was not traumatized by witnessing car-versus-animal-Darwinism. And my to-do list is plenty long enough; I needed the job of scooping up the entrails of a possum like a hole in head.