Opossum in the window!

I walked into my office - pictured - around 8 am this morning, as usual. A visitor awaited, but I didn't see it right away. As is my custom, I stumbled to my desk and dug into emails and the other stuff that awaits each morning. Around 9 am, I got a phone call and as is often the case when I'm on the phone, I stand up and scan the grounds from the window. As soon as I glanced out the window today, it was WHOA! What a fine marsupial in my tree!

In the photo above, look out the window to the right of the monitor on my mini-fridge, and just up and left of the picture of the red 1992 Ferrari 512 TR (not the first time I've used one of these Italian supercars in relation to a mammal, SEE HERE). A Virginia Opossum, Didelphis virginiana, resting in my crabapple tree!

Look closely on the lefthand limb of the crabapple on the right, and you'll see my (that's right, MY) opossum basking on his branch. He's (could be a girl, I dunno) sitting about three or four feet from my window.

We move in a bit closer to the magnificent beast. The silver rectangle in the window is the back of my fridge that we saw in the first photo.

I work my way in for the close shot, and was greeted with a feeble hiss and a less than frightening baring of 50 teeth. Then he ignored me. But lots of people didn't ignore my opossum. Aided and abetted by your narrator, word spread far and wide through the building that an opossum was lazing in my tree. Drawn by the curious spectacle of the only marsupial occurring in the United States, I had a steady stream of admirers (of the opossum, not me), passing through the office.

They say (them, not me) that all babies are cute. Well, you may think that big ole adult opossum was ugly as a mud fence, but even the naysayers might have to concede that these juvenile opossums are mighty cute. I photographed them last fall; they were in the hands of an animal rehabber.

Back in 2006, I wrote a column about Virginia Opossums in the Columbus Dispatch. It follows: