Brer Possum

There’s a large undeveloped field behind our house. The backyard fence between us and the field is only marginally effective in keeping the wild critters on their side of the boundary, sorta like something out of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Good fences make for good neighbors?

The other night the dogs were going apoplectic barking at something in the backyard. Unwisely, my girlfriend let them out. It was a possum, walking the top of the back fence.

Immediately the larger dog pulled the possum down off the fence and killed it.

This upset my girlfriend.

She quickly regained her composure and managed to bustle the dogs back inside. She then rooted around in the garage for a few minutes for a shovel so that she could scoop up Brer Possum’s carcass and toss him into someone else’s back yard (sorta the way Oklahoma did to Texas with meth labs). By the time she got out to the backyard again, the Brer Possum was gone.

He’d been playing possum.