Some years ago, my father went in for open heart surgery. It was bitter cold that winter, and my sisters were up to their eyeballs, so I went down there to stay at the house and keep the fire going while he was away and recovering. For that week or so I was the only one on the farm at night; and outside the doors it was very, very dark. To go to bed, I did what I had always done growing up: I turned off the downstairs light and felt my way upstairs in the pitchy darkness to my bedroom.

From that day to this, I could never keep track of a flashlight.

I didn’t want to admit it, but each night I was a little more reluctant to turn off the light, and a little more likely to stub my toe in the darkness as I rushed blindly upstairs. Who knew what might be grinning at me beyond the porch light, waiting for a chance to creep closer?

On the fifth night (or so) I steeled myself to turn off the living room light, telling myself sternly that I was being silly. No sooner had I extinguished the light and turned towards where I imagined the stairs to be, then I heard a tremendous crash on the front porch, not ten feet in actual distance from where I stood. The crash was followed by a weird grumbling and snuffling sound and some additional banging noises.

Should I just run up the stairs? Hide under the covers, thereby rendering myself invisible and unattainable to whatever was blundering around on the porch? No. Grown woman that I was, I turned on the porch light and peered through the window.

It was, as you have no doubt surmised, a possum, happily eating the cat food that it had scattered all over the porch. In characteristic slow motion, the creature turned its ghostly, prehistoric visage towards me; lazily twitched its thumb-sized, hairless tail; and turned back to its feast. As soon as my heart slowed down enough to allow higher order thinking, I thought of my mother, as I always do when I encounter a possum. I remember her naming all of possum-kind, collectively, Hibiscus, and leaving small dishes of cat food under the hedge for them. Whenever it became necessary to evict a possum from the premises (the hen house, for example), this chore would usually fall to my father or my brave sister Laura. The elected individual would capture the creature by its long rat-like tail and gently transport it to the nearest thicket. If my mother participated in this ritual at all, it was usually to bring the ancient beast a snack while warbling, “O, possum, my possum! Our fearful trip is done!”

And say what you like, I will not refer to any such creature as an opossum. It just sounds affected.

Photograph by Laura J. Graham

For your further edification:

 O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman | Poetry Foundation

What’s the Difference? Possum vs. Opossum (msn.com)

Possum vs. Opossum: Is There a Difference? | Merriam-Webster