Playing Possum

When the snow started to melt away, our 7 yr. old son noticed that we had a new lawn fixture. A frozen, giant, swollen dead possum. Very attractive. My husband and I agreed that while the younger ones were napping, we'd take the snow shovel and give this critter a proper burial (a flying leap into the woods across the street). Well, we were sidetracked and a couple of days went by. The deceased started to attract gigantic turkey buzzards. Also, very attractive. When our son returned home from school one day, he asked us if we thought the possum was just pretending to be dead. My husband mouthed the words, "Yeah, for three days!" Well, the subject was dropped again and soon forgotten about. The next day, I was coming home from the grocery store. The younger children were asleep in the back seat. There was the frozen statue of what used to be a perfectly good possum lying at the edge of the yard. I thought, "Here's my opportunity! I don't think I can wait for D to get home from work to take care of this." I got the shovel and tried to scoop up the possum (and his insides that were now outside) . He was frozen solid to the ground. I had to scrape and scrape and finally, "JACKPOT". I carried the possum to it's final resting place. I was feeling pretty good about myself. After all, I had taken care of our "little problem". All in a days work. And guess what. No one even noticed.