Yesterday evening DH wanted ice cream.  So off we went to the local DQ so he
can get his (pseudo) ice cream fix.  We got to the end of our driveway, and
I was talking about how the creeping phlox we had planted there was doing
fairly well, and he was looking out his (driver's side/left side) window
looking at it before he pulled out into the road.

All of a sudden, he's throwing the car into park and yelling.  And I'm
asking, "What?  What?" while trying to get up high enough to see what he's
looking at through his window.

He opens his door, and points.

There, trying (and not doing a very good job of it) to hid in the phlox is a
baby opossum.  I see his/her itty-bitty face peering out at us.

DH fears it is too close to the road, and may get squished, so (with my
urging) he picks it up and places it in the yard at the top of our retaining
wall (this retaining wall is at the front of our property, and the driveway
goes between it, the phlox I had planted is growing at the base of the wall
near the end of the driveway - little opossum was about 6-8 feet from our
very busy road, and extremely close to our tires as we drove past!).

It toddled off towards a nearby pine tree (blue spruce) and we got back in
the car and went off to get DH his fix of ice cream.

We got one block and decided to turn around and go back.

Baby Possum is where we left him, 1/2 way between retaining wall and pine
tree.

DH is asking what we should do.

I say just pick him up and hand him to me.  I wrapped him(her?) up in the
tail of my T-shirt, and we stood there looking around for others, or
possibly Mama. Possum.

Nuttin.

Baby must have fallen off Mama before or after she crossed the road (baby
possums cling to Mama's back when she travels).

Baby is opening his mouth *wide* as a threat, and I occasionally hear an
itty-bitty hiss (like Mimi did when we first "rescued" her).  He/she has got
a mouthful of teeth.  But opossums are slow moving critters.

Cute li'l bugger, never mind the oversized jaws (making it look like a
crocodile with fur).  He looked a lot like the three on this page:
http://theopossumpage.com/pagefinding.html

Anyway, we have no idea how to care for a baby opossum.  Not to mention that
doing so without the proper licensing and permits is illegal.

So we look up our local wildlife rehab people - a non-profit called WildCare
http://www.wildcareinc.org/

It was after 8pm, so we weren't expecting a call back.  In the meantime,
what were we to do with Baby?  On the front porch, in a box with a lot of
paper towels for bedding, and a lid from a jar with water-soaked kitty
kibble.

With Baby all tucked in, and the phone set to forward to my cell phone, off
we went to get DH's ice cream fix.  It being a balmy spring evening, the DQ
was (in the words of Kenny, Kyle, Eric and Stan) uber-busy.  While we were
waiting in line, we get a call from WildCare.

It's almost 9pm, very dark out, and he agrees to meet us at their offices on
the other end of town in 1/2 an hour to 45 minutes.

They are very hard to find in the daytime, so needless to say we drove back
and forth, looking for the place.  The wildlife rehab guy was very nice, and
said, yup - still a Baby - not quite ready to be on it's own, and that Mama
at least taught it something right the way he was threatening and hissing :)

Get home at around 10pm, DQ is now closed, and DH never did get his ice
cream fix!

But we did feel better for saving a baby opossum!  And it ended up not being
a quite-so-nice night with heavy thunder storms and rain most of the night.

As of this writing, DH has still to have his ice cream!
--
The ONE and ONLY
lefthanded-pathetic-paranoid-psychotic-sarcastic-wiseass-ditzy former-blonde
in Bloomington! (And proud of it, too)©
email me at nalee1964 (at) insightbb (dot) com
http://community.webshots.com/user/mgcmdjeep