Later that evening, I wasn’t feeling so great (I’m looking at you, Sonic chicken sandwich). But Moe needed his evening pee poo walk, so I set out slowly around the campsite loop. Almost immediately, I saw a small animal moving down the paved road in the middle of the campground. It seemed awkward, or maybe ill.

Now, I grew up in Pennsylvania and we had opossums there, so I thought I knew a thing or two about opossums (not stopping to acknowledge that almost all of the possums I’d ever seen were roadkill). However, I HAD personally encountered a raccoon that was acting that way, and that ended with my ex-husband shooting it. (Then what? According to the PA state wildlife officer we called, “double bag it and throw it in the trash.”)

Anyway, this possum was headed, slowly, toward someone else’s campsite, so I went to warn them. A tall man, totally bald, with a goatee-wide beard that was 6” long, came out to investigate. “Oh, hun,” he said, that’s just a possum looking for food” and to my amazement he walked over, PICKED IT UP BY THE TAIL, and carried it away from the campsites into a wooded area. The possum just hung there, legs akimbo, the entire time.

The man came back. “Aww”, he said, “it just wrapped its tail around my finger and hung on.” Then he patted my shoulder consolingly. “It’s OK,” he said. “Just a possum.”