by Jan Fielden
The Colonel made the remark that he thought with the loss of a lot of the trees in the Personal Grove with a lot of brush coming up in it that there was more wildlife around the ranch. Last week I saw an Armadillo which I had not seen in ages except lying on the highways here and there and not too often at that. The Beagles got me on to that one by chasing the little thing inside the fence while it was outside the fence. They all put up a fast-moving race with no one really winning. Well, I guess the Armadillo won since it didn’t get bitten by the dogs but then again, maybe the dogs won.
Yesterday morning, I looked out the window into the back yard because MO was barking at something. It looked like a lump of gray something or other. MO was not barking as if it were a snake and there was none of the darting in and out like they do with snakes. So, I decided I had better go see what it was just to protect the Beagles from this “thing” laying in the yard. Getting a little closer I thought it was just a lump of grass that the sun was drying out. But when I got up close enough to look down at the whole thing, I saw it was a Possum.
I thought it was dead and theorized it had fallen out of the tree. When I tried to get it on the shovel MO pulled it off. I finally got him to stop that and noticed that the Possum was, for the lack of a better word, grinding its teeth, eyes were closed, claws were also moving. I walked over to the fence after first picking up a stick to hold this animal on the shovel. I then threw it over the fence. When I checked later it was long gone! The Possum of the Red Oak Ranch didn’t hang around too long.
