Possum Thoughts & Some Pics

[rowyn]

On Friday morning, as I walked to work after calling Animal Control, I went over in my head reasons for why it was OK for me to let the baby opposums die. Animals die all the time and I don't do anything about it. I'm not a vegetarian: I eat dead animals, and I don't fret over the crappy quality of life they have before being slaughtered, either. I keep cats and I wouldn't shed a tear if they caught mice. I can't take care of baby opposums even if I did rescue them from animal control and the elements. Who is going to invest the time and energy necessary to keep a bunch of tiny animals alive? Surely the Wildlife Center didn't call me back because don't have anyone who can take them. Opposums are not an endangered species. Nobody cares about them. What difference does it make?

And it doesn't make a difference, does it? The world is not going to be a better place for having a few more baby opposums in it, and it's not going to be a worse one without them. No one's life is going to be improved. Well, no one's except for the babies', anyway, and they don't count, do they?

And I actually believe that, except that I don't.

No don't let them! Save the baby possums!

elvenlaughter left that in a comment. And ... that's how I felt

It didn't really matter that I couldn't think of a single sensible practical reason why I should try to save the baby possums, or that I could think of a half-dozen reasons saving them wouldn't work anyway, or that there are much simpler tasks that I need to do that I can't get my act together to do. I wanted to save the baby possums.

So I made that third call to the wildlife center, for Elvenlaughter and that little kid inside me saying no don't let them! For the storyteller in me that wrote the first entry thinking what am I writing? "I found a dead opossum with babies still in her pouch, and I called animal control and they picked them up and killed them." What kind of a crappy story is that? Because every reason not to felt like just a rationalization of why it was too much trouble.

Because the inability to articulate one side of an argument doesn't mean that side is wrong.

I still feel guilty for going to work Friday morning instead of doing something then, and getting them to the rehabbers sooner. I still can't explain why it mattered to me. But I don't need to. It was the right thing to do. Sometimes it's enough just to know that.

Also, they were insanely cute.

	Palm Possum
	Just gimme five more minutes Baby possum in the classic why-won't-you-let-me-sleep position. I saw a lot of this.
	Another Palm Possum Pic
	I can haz sponge? That's a standard kitchen dish sponge. The baby possums were perhaps three inches from nose to base of tail. Three or four of them could've fit on top of the sponge.
	Ball o' Possum
	Teeny tiny claws Their feet had itty-bitty claws. They couldn't actually hurt anything with them, but they had an excellent grip.

Also, one note -- I keep saying "I saved them", which is technically true -- I was the one who gathered them up, brought them inside, cleaned them, etc. But Lut did a whole bunch of stuff for me while I was dealing with the possumlings. He moved the cat stuff from the foyer to the kitchen so the possumlings could have the foyer, fed my cats, went to the store for possum-stuff, drove me and the possums to the rehab center, and so on. The rescue operation was a joint effort. And of course, not nearly as much effort for us as for the rehabber who ended up with them will have to put in.

Comments

[level-head.livejournal.com]

There is a whole lot of life -- incidents from your neighborhood to around the world -- that you'd be inclined to think about (as would almost all of us) when they intrude on your consciousness.

Television advertising for starving people overseas are short on statistics, and long on cute-but-troubled faces. Numbers do not grab the hearts of most folks.

It's quite natural, and the job of people with a cause to support is to be in your face as much as possible.

But often enough, nature and chance conspire to do for some what advertising doesn't bother with.

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

Also, the things one has direct experience with are more convincing. I might wonder whether or not this organization running ads about starving kids in Africa is really going to use my donation to help them, but I'm not worried that the baby possums are trying to scam me. :)

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Scams in the natural world are common. But we don't think of them the same way, and they're not usually aimed at humans -- so we don't take them personally. Some have made it into the language, though, like "playing possum." ];-)

===|==============/ Level Head

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

"I found a dead opossum with babies still in her pouch, and I called animal control and they picked them up and killed them." What kind of a crappy story is that?

Last summer, Kage found a baby black snake that had managed to get the top of his head stuck to an insect glue-trap in our garage. After a lot of gentle prying, use of diluted solvents, and snatching his hands back so he wouldn't get nipped, Kage finally managed to free the snake and coax it into the small wooded area behind our house. The whole process took about an hour and the snake still lost a few scales in the bargain.

However, the alternate ending would have been, "I found a baby black snake stuck in a glue trap in my garage and I let it die there."

Truly, what kind of a crappy story is that??

[rowyn]

Good for Kage! Everyone prefers a happy ending. :)

[elvenlaughter.livejournal.com]

My friend Bella adores possums. Just adores them. I'm sure she would have taken in the whole kit'n'kaboodle in a heartbeat if she'd had the chance. And these babies ARE insanely cute.

And hey! you quoted me! For some reason, it always makes me feel like I belong to something bigger when people quote me in their LJs. It doesn't happen very often, mind. But anyway, is it ridiculous of me to be excited about that? I have no idea, and I don't really care. The world now knows my stance on rescuing baby possums, and perhaps somebody's life will be changed by my outburst. ;-P

[rowyn]

It changed the baby possums' lives! I wouldn't've made that third phone call to the sanctuary -- the one where I finally got a person! -- if you hadn't left your comment. :)

[elvenlaughter.livejournal.com]

YAY! I feel so special and important!

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

The answer, borrowed from a completely different story: However much or little it matters what happens to them, the point is as much or more about what it does to us.

[rowyn]

Very, very true. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I think that if everything I did in life had to be justified by pure, cold logic, in the end I just might end up rationalizing myself right out of existence, if I went too far. I think what you did was pretty cool, logical or not. =)

[rowyn]

Thanks, wuf. :)

One of the things I forgot to mention but meant to: there's a lot of drilled-in inhibitions about mucking with wild animals. "Don't touch, leave them alone, they're better off without your help, anything you do will make it worse". It was strangely liberating not to be worried about that, to think that no, really, gathering up the baby animals and bringing them inside really was their best chance at this point.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I can think of two important differences you made!

One is the difference for the baby possums themselves - they have a chance, of course.

The other is for yourselves - you and Lut. Part of your character is now defined as that you're people who'll go through the extra time and nerve-wracking to save baby possums!

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Yes, very good effort.

Much better story. Logic doesn't always work, often better to go with the feelings.