Homing In on My Purpose in Life

Just returned from a 3 AM outing with the pooch.

The acoustics outside were eerie. Every flutter of a plastic bag, every scrape against pavement of a plastic bottle, every dry leaf could be heard as if amplified in a concert hall. The pooch was on high alert.

We were headed for home when, just a few doors down from our building where we sometimes see a bunny, we (really, I since I had to draw the pooch's attention to it) spotted an opossum.

We watched it as it ambled north between a row of bushes and a building. But when it stepped out of the bushes onto a walkway, I saw its most unusual tail. Rather than the long hairless prehensile tail of most opossums, this one had what can only be described as a silver-and-black bottle-brush tail (sans handle). That is to say, it was about the length of a cocker spaniel's tail and the hairs stuck out every which way.

Now you may recall that in early September I saw another mutant opossum. And I was told long ago that there's some lore about sighting opossums (or maybe it was because the opossum I saw was white). Anyway, what are the odds of seeing two mutant opossums when there aren't that many normal ones around? What does this mean?

This is beginning to feel like the melon mystery of September, as yet unsolved since I never saw a third melon in the lake. Time will tell if these nocturnal creatures signify anything.

But tonight's opossum meant one obvious thing to my dog: Life is too thrilling outside at 3 AM to be stuck inside on a 3rd floor. I managed to get her into the building, but she immediately parked herself in the foyer, awaiting the next adventure.

[Found the pic on Retrieverman, though I don't know that he was the photographer.]