i chased a possum around the yard the other day...he was keeping one eye on me the whole time.

possums with their prehensile tails seem to get such a bum rap...

What comes to my mind is the old question-answer...kind of a joke, kind of the truth! Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the possum that it could be done!
These poor beasties are so badly equipped to deal with modern technology...cars, car headlights, flashlights, fences, roads, sidewalks..it confuses them! I remember being stopped on a country road near here at night (and taking a BIG risk that I'd be rear-ended by another car coming around the curve) because a confused possum was skittering under the car and around my tires. First it had been stunned by headlights, and then in confusion, it ran under the car. Sheesh! It finally decided the woods might be a little safer. This one was practically begging to be run over.
We don't see a lot of them out in the open around here...people tend to feed their pets inside, and most people keep their trash cans in their garage. There's also the large fox population.
On the other hand, I've had deer standing on my front porch..eating my geraniums. And raising tomatoes is an exercise in frustration...they'll wait until there's several tomatoes close to perfect ripeness, and then they'll eat the tomatoes and the vines, to the ground...overnight. Poof! No tomato plants! Just a sad little stub, sticking out of the ground. Or, they'll leave the vines, but take one big bite out of every tomato.

Sounds like the deer at my parents' house. They even love to eat the plants they're not supposed to like. And then there are the turkeys, who'll take over the yard when they show up, and are not phased at all by the deer, but will chase them away.

possums will eat pretty much anything including garbage and dead things...you might call them natures sanitation engineers but then again you might not. (i don't recall having much trouble with them getting into the garbage cans though)
they also tend to be nocturnal which may be why you don't see many of them out in the open during the day (?) which is why i was happy to see him cuz i hadn't seen one in a while.
ran right out and said, "hi! what are you doing?" 'course he was pretending not to ignore me...

got a couple of pretty good pictures...

there be other critters around here too...
used to be a rabbit, i remember wondering what would become of the lettuce i had growing (i'd read peter rabbit after all) ...i remember one day walking down and finding him right in the middle of the lettuce patch, and i said in a mock reprimand, "hey you! you are not supposed to be there!" and he just laid down right flat there in the middle of the garden as if to mock me right back.
..but he seemed to prefer the weeds growing around the edges (looked like plantain?), i was glad of that.

Possums is good at playing possum, they can sit around and do absolutely nuthin' better than any blunderite I know. Granny Clampett makes a mean possum stew. That's about all I know about possums.

I think Kraft Foods made a drink that tasted like coffee called Possum.

It tasted pretty good too, if you strained the prehensile tail hair out of it first. Never caught on at Starbucks (except some select venues in Deliverance country).


mikey

i can hear it now....
"well, we don't have any coffee...care for some possum?"

http://southeastfarmpress.com/news_arch ... ne-prices/

it's a bum rap i tell ya!

That beverage was/is called Postem, I used to drink it.

Postum, Larry, Postum.

Used in a sentence: Postum if you got 'em! Lends itself to internet replies.

Did you really drink that stuff? I think I tried it once and spit it out. Tasted like a cross between beer and cereal. Coors Flakes? Pabst Toasties?


mikey

yerah, that's it....postum.......it was a cereal beverage that was supposed to taste kinda like coffee. I drank it in my early teenage years.

Anyone remember Ovaltine? I hated that stuff...! It was supposed to taste like cocoa, but it mostly tasted like vitamins. It was widely advertised and foisted off on kids in the late 50's. I think it's still around, but I never bought any for my kids.

Ever wonder why they call it "oval" tine? The glass is round, the jar is round... they should call it "roundtine."

Yep, I remember it well... I've even bought it recently. Not too bad.

Yes Ovaltine is still around, once in a great while the commercials are still aired despite the slogan "More Ovaltine Please!" so annoying in my cerebral organ. Does anybody remember PDQ? That crystalized drink was sold in the seventies and was very nasty! PDQ was sold in a glass jar and you add the chocolate crystals as they dissolved in the milk to make it tasteful like Nestle Quik. PDQ should have been named Nastle Sik!!

I remember Mike telling ocne that when he used to live in a hiiibilly area of KY his mom fixed some possum once. THey eat it up there lol...