them procreatin' elves: June 2007

In our Manhattan apartment, we had these wide, deep windowsills that the cats loved to sit on and watch the pigeons and seagulls wheeling around the rooftops of nearby buildings. That was about it for fauna in our neighborhood, unless you count the rats. (There's an entire book-length treatise on the rats of the Financial District.)

In Milford, the windowsills are more shallow, but there is a remarkable profusion of birds: red-winged blackbirds, many robins and sparrows, acrobatic swallows that come out at dusk, egrets, herons, and even (we believe) ibises. Ibises, in Connecticut! Given the improved avian action, the cats have quickly figured out how to balance on the tiny windowsills.

And, of course, there are the ticks. The glorious, glorious ticks! Greta picked one up on her very first day here, and nearly took the next train back into the city.

Fortunately, she had no further disturbing wildlife encounters ... until this past Saturday. We were bringing Seamus back from a walk on the beach when Greta saw, out of the corner of her eye, something moving near her feet. Startled, she yelled, "Oh god!" -- I looked and saw a frightened, shivering baby opossum hissing pitifully and ineffectually at us from about a foot away.

If you know Greta, you know that this story does not end with us saying, "What a repulsive little rat-creature! Make sure that no fleas leap onto Seamus from it," or even, "Poor possum, I hope he makes it," and then heading home. Instead, the next thing you know, we had a possum in a shoebox in our bedroom. Should you ever find yourself in a similar circumstance, the thing to do is to put the possum in a secure box, and put the box on top of a heating pad set on low. And give it a dish of apple sauce. And name it Blossom. (That last bit is optional, but it's what we did, and the animal didn't seem to mind.)

(A representative baby opossum ... not actually Blossom.)

Unfortunately, we were not able to make Blossom a permanent addition to our menagerie, because a) opossums are not domesticatable, and b) the cats would have made a quick snack out of him, and probably left his innards on our bed as an offering to us, their gods.

Instead, we called various places until we found a veterinarian who rehabilitates orphaned possums (everyone has to have a hobby, I guess). The poor little beast was looking pretty miserable when I took one last peek into the shoebox before handing it over to the vet's assistant ... I hope that he makes it to adulthood, and will soon be extremely fat and raiding garbage cans in our neighborhood.

This is Blossom, in the shoebox-and-toilet-paper nest that we made for him. The bottom of his box is smeared with baby-food apple sauce ... he was a messy eater: