Dec. 29, ’09-Frozen stillness slaps my skin as I step out onto the porch in the early morning. I dare to glance @ the thermometer and it rudely displays -3 degrees. I steal a glance through my half face mask and then it happens. I savor stars all sparkly strung through the sky like Christmas lights. Shuffling my oversized boots through chores, I notice all the serenity that exists in the solitude of the stillness. That quiet spot deep inside that whispers secrets of  knowing. I slip deep into hearing the quiet murmurings that exist in silence.  A light is on inside the old vacant house on our lower farm. I ponder this a moment and I thought too hard for the light disappears.

I push hard on the barn door and half fall into a pile of meowing kittys. There’s Skinny Kitty, Punkin, Snuffy and 3 more cats all tripping over each other. I hesitate to turn a light on. I notice a movement across the vacant sheep pen. Now I’m enticed to cast light to block out the shadows of the morning. There it is-an opossum out for a stroll. Now opossums just teeter and totter their bodies when they stroll.  They feast on cat food. My brother Tim, used to have a opossum that he fed with his cats to see just how fat the opossum would get.

 I sling constellations of star kitty vittles on the cold concrete barn floor. Skinny Kitty is embedded on my snow pants and I shake my leg and he lands on the floor. He jumps back up on top of the garbage can filled with kitty food. I shove him off and quickly put the brown lid on the can with a slab of fire wood for extra weight that distracts cat paws from opening the lid with lust. It’s cat’s manna from heaven-actually dug out from a Special Kitty cat food bag.

We have a trapping supply business and I’m sure my man can set a trap to save the cat food. Yeah, that’s right! Why just last night I was crouched in the dark doing evening chores in this very same barn. Crouched in the corner where the feed bin auger brings the feed in where I turn the auger switch on. I’m just tidying up, so nicely conserving the precious morsels of grain to feed the Billie Goatie. I’m scooping it off the concrete and felt I was being watched. I stood up and flipped a light on. There in that corner was an opossum. I gave a little yeller and stepped outside..”Tom!!”  He   ran over and grabbed a shovel.   I hear myself saying, “Wait Tom..why don’t we like opossums again..it’s kinda cute.”  Quick thinking and he hits the perfect answer! “Because they eat chickens and the eggs!”  “OK…” There’s a rodeo in the barn and the opossum is doing his little teeter totter trot out and under the door-away from Tom.   I avert my eyes and plug my ears and do my “Na nan na-can’t hear you!” performance. Tom won..but then again here’s a opossum in the early morning hours and it looks a lot like the large one from last night.

I see the far star in the town of Arcadia all lit up as I venture way out for rejuvenation. My black eyelashes freeze together and feel all clumpy and damp. My curls are frozen and ice coated, as I see splotches of pink and yellow decorating the skies.  I find coyote tracks embedded in the frozen snow. Each step is deliberate on the crusty snow surface.  A fox had dug a tiny hole and I stop to examine the dirt and grasses that are dragged from under the snow’s surface. I raise my fingertips to the skies and sing the beckoning song. I hear the leaves start to rustle in the woods  and wait for the hawk to emerge.  Instead an eagle wooshes over me and I melt into the whitewashed waves of winter wonderment. I feel the enormous space in my mind’s crevices. I trudge towards home and know there not electricity in that old house.

Do you have an opossum story to share?

 Search the winter sky and see the story,

Sue Roskos