The other day my father in law was over making dinner on the grill in the back deck. I was washing dishes and he popped his head in the door and loudly whispered, "Christine, come out here!"

"Hold on, I'm doing dishes..."

"Hurry! You have to come out here quick!"

I came over by the door and he pointed to my backyard. When we bought the house it came with a hammock in the back. Since Dave is crazy about his lawn being green, he always takes it down and rolls it up when he's done so the hammock doesn't affect the lawn.

Standing above the rolled hammock was a opossum. He was moving slowly off the roll. "Did he come out from inside the hammock?" I asked

"Yeah, he crawled out from the middle. I guess he was sleeping there. I think he may be dying."

"Nah...he's ok." I said as I went back in to finish the dishes.

A couple minutes later my F-I-L rushes in again and exclaims, "It's dead! That thing is dead!"

"No, he's just pretending to be dead. That's what opossums do, they pretend to be dead when they're scared."

"No, he's dead. I poked him with a stick." Clearly, my F-I-L is not scared of rabies or sharp little animal teeth.

"He's pretending..." I said, and continued with the dishes. He went back outside to check on the corpse.

In popped in his head once again - "He's gone! He ran away while I was talking to you ...you're right! He was only faking it!"

Yep...that's what opossums do.

Then a week later, Dave found this big guy hanging out on the deck.

At first we thought it was a beaver...but of course, it's your average woodchuck. But isn't he a cutie?

Posted by Yano at September 26, 2006 11:31 AM

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