Urban Possum
This evening I was in the city of Jackson. I was parked in a downtown lot near the corner of Wildwood and Wisner, eating dinner in my car. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye so I looked over, thinking maybe a cat was crossing the lot. You know how sometimes you see feral and/or domesticated cats staking out parking lots in the city, searching for scraps or dumpster mice or whatever? Well, I looked over, and to my surprise I saw NOT a cat but a POSSUM. A possum! Downtown! Nowhere near the countryside at all! Downtown, surrounded by highways and streets and businesses on all sides. I stared in amazement; it seemed so out of place. And holy crackers, was it HUGE! Especially its face. Its head was twice the size of an adult cat's head. And so white! The eyes reminded me of the white owl from the Harry Potter movies.
I've never been that close to a LIVE possum before. Dead ones, sure; I live in the country and I see them on the road all the time, in various degrees of "freshness," but it was quite a novelty to see a living moving possum casually sauntering through a city as if he owned the place.
The face was so big, so white, and the eyes were so wide-set that actually I felt kinda creeped out. Yeccchh!
Incidentally, while searching for the possum picture you see up in the corner there, I came across THIS SITE which actually tells you how to cook possum. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll find recipes for "Roasted Stuffed Opossum With Sweet Potatoes" and "Barbecued Opossum". Also on the page are recipes for squirrel and raccoon.
(Is that the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies I hear wafting through the air??)
6 comments:
I have an amazingly similar story...
I grew up in a small town called Clio. Cornfields, cow pastures, the works. I myself grew up on 11 acres of field and woods, and never once did i see a skunk anywhere but the side of the road...that is, until two/three years ago, when Kyle and I moved down to Lansing. There on the corner of Aurelius and Jolly roads, was a skunk, *live* skunk, sniffing and waddling around by a telephone pole there. In LANSING. By the side of TWO BUSY ROADS. What the deuce!
p.s.--janna, i have an AMAZING bitchy customer story from tonight for you on tuesday ABC!! don't let me forget!
That's funny --- Spider just posted a story this week about an urban possum!
We had a HUGE dirty old possum that visited our house in Dayton --- remember the cat lady that lived next door to us? That possum would get up on her back porch every night and crunch crunch crunch on the cat food crunchies. One night, I came home from work and came up the back steps and suddenly the doormat hissed at me. There was that big old possum, curled up on the doormat! It was so big, I couldn't get the door open. I went to the garage and got a broom, and had to broom-push it off the porch. It did not want to move!
Here in Michigan, when we moved to our house, there was a big possum that lived in the barn, but it didn't make it thru last winter. It curled up to sleep in the hay and never woke up. Now, there's a tiny little rapscallion of a possum that's taken up residence in the barn. I've only seen it twice, and both times it was raining at night --- it was out in the garden. I wonder if it was eating rotten tomatoes, or getting slugs (I read somewhere in a gardening magazine that possums like slugs -- yuk -- but that they can be a nuisance in a garden 'cuz they dig up your flower beds if you have slug infestations). Anyway, if I see the little critter while you're visiting, I'll make sure to point him out.
I know that there's a recipe in Kentucky for possum stew called Burgoo. Sometimes you can actually buy Burgoo at festivals.
Mmmmmmm. Roadkill stew.
my dog once "played" with a possum in the backyard until it was actually dead....
in the streets of downtown Aiken,SC coyotes roam during the middle of the night........
and we have peregrine falcons in downtown Augusta......and because we have the falcons, we no longer have very many pigeons.......
Hi Janna,
I found your blog through Morgen's. I live in a small town in what used to be the town commons in 1738. We are on the marsh and I have a possum that comes every night and eats my cat's food. He gets really PO'd when I go out to smoke a ciggerette because I run him off the porch. It creeps me out to have him sit beside me and munch on the cat food. We also have alligators (I haven't seen one near the house yet), occassional deer and I've been told, ferral pigs. They suppossedly swim over from an island in the marsh.
Morgian: A new customer story! Yay!
Morgen: Thanks for letting me know that if anyone ever offers me "Burgoo", I should run quickly in the opposite direction.
Stak: Not sure if I'd like the coyotes, but the falcons sound cool.
Lae: I'll check it out, thanks...
Leah: Alligators?? Now that's definitely cool. And the PIGS swim across the marsh?? I wonder how many of them get eaten by the alligators!
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