do mama possums have the right idea?

Can you see it? It is a baby possum laying in the wet ivy. How did it get there you might be wondering...well I can tell you. The kids and I were sitting in the living room watching the very rare occurrence of rain when we saw a mama possum on the fence. Upon further observation we noticed that she had three babies on her back. We were oohing and awing over how cute it looked when all of the sudden mama possum shook her body, like a wet dog does to dry himself. Much to our horror one of the babies fell off her back and into our ivy. We were sure mama possum would realize she had shaken a baby off and climb down to get him. We were wrong, she just kept walking along the fence. We figured she didn't realize one of her babies had fallen off and that she would surely return for her offspring. So we waited. And waited. And waited a little longer. Finally my kids could not stand the fact that a baby possum was wet and cold and laying in the ivy probably scared. So out my oldest son went with a box to rescue the baby possum.

Isn't that one of the saddest things you have seen. Poor little thing was soaked through and shaking with cold. We quickly wrapped baby possum up. Baby possum at this time became Vern. Yep, big mistake naming him! Okay, Vern is now dry and safe, now what? Now what! What does a baby possum eat and how often does a baby possum eat? My days of getting up in the middle of the night to feed a hungry baby are far behind me and I don't want to do it again. So I pull out the laptop and immediately start looking up local pet stores and start making phone calls. Strangely enough, pet stores don't deal with wild possums.

So, I started calling possum rescue centers. That's right, there is such a thing. I got a lot of answering machines before I finally got through to a real live lady. I told her what had happened, she then explained to me that is what mama possums do. Once their babies get to be a certain size, around 5-7 inches, they walk the neighborhood and shake their babies off to repopulate the area. So what we witnessed was just the natural weaning process of the Opossum. Who knew? Not us, obviously

Now what (didn't I already ask that)? We now had baby Vern and bonding has started. How could we just put him back out in the wet, cold ivy in the rain? I made Vern some scrambled egg's, which Vern just loved, and we gave him some water. He is getting more domesticated by the minute, which frankly worries me. I am not keeping a possum as a pet. Something needs to be done and soon.

I was lying in bed last night, waiting for sleep to come and I started thinking. I have five kids and they are all getting older. My oldest is 14 now, and although I love him to death, I am looking forward to the time when he becomes an independent and responsible adult and ventures out on his own to make his way in the world. You don't think those things when they are babies, you actually hope they will stay little and be with you forever. I stopped thinking that after my fifth baby was born. My thinking became more like "if they weren't growing up and becoming more independent people I will just go insane".

But my boys keep telling me they are going to live with us forever (not the girls). Um, no. So, I was thinking, does the mama possum have the right idea? Does she realize that those babies are going to hang onto her forever if she doesn't do something, like shake them off her back? That might be a little drastic for humans. I could just picture us moving off while our kids are out on a date or telling them we are going to go get ice cream and as soon as they get out of the car at the ice cream shop we would just drive off. I don't see that happening. What I do hope that happens is that my kids will grow up to be good people and contribute something positive to society. I pray daily that I am doing my part to be sure that happens.