Growing for Winter

Cheryl, our local animal control officer who takes care of rescued opossums -- a girl and a boy -- usually raises babies through the summer. She keeps them in a cage in a barn at the local animal shelter. (We are not allowed to visit this place.) Then at about the end of September, Cheryl releases the opossums in a remote forest area where there are a lot of berries.

Zosia and I had rescued two baby opossums and turned them over to Cheryl in June. We kept in touch with Cheryl, and she informed us that one of the babies, the girl, died. In August, Cheryl did us a wonderful favor by bringing our surviving boy opossum back to our home for a visit.

We continued to keep in touch with Cheryl, and in September she informed us that our baby opossum was growing slowly and perhaps would not reach a sufficient size to be released at the end of September. We were dismayed that our opossum was growing slowly, but Zosia was delighted that our boy would be allowed to continue living in the animal shelter's barn.

In mid-October, Cheryl's boss (a veterinarian) at the animal shelter decided to keep our opossum through the winter. Cheryl brought the opossum to visit us again before the weather became too cold. On the happy day of this visit, Cheryl drove up and parked her truck in front of our home.

Cheryl had our opossum in a cage in the back of the truck. Cheryl does not like to take any unnecessary risks with her animals, so she hoped that Zosia and I would be satisfied by merely loooking at our opossum right there in the cage in the truck.

Fortunately, however, Cheryl was no match for Zosia, who begged her to bring the cage into our home so that we could leisurely look at our opossum in a more open area with better light. Eventually Cheryl gave in to Zosia's pleading and brought the cage into our home and opened the cage's door so that we enjoy an unobstructed view.

We all were somewhat concerned that our opossum might dash out of the cage into our living room, and so Zosia then convinced Cheryl that we should move our opossum out of his cage into a plastic, laundry tub with high walls. (This was the same laundry tub where we had kept both infant opossums in our home before Cheryl had come to get them from us in June.)

Zosia and I both fell in love all over again with our baby opossum! He was ultra cute!!

I thought he was much bigger than he had been in August, but Cheryl said that he should be approaching adult size. He now was about the size of a fat guinea pig. He still was much smaller than his mother, who had been bigger than a cat, about the size of a small dog.

Zosia thought he had not grown at all since August. She still considers him to be a baby. Whenever she talks about him with me, she always calls him "our baby." I always object: "He's not a baby any more!", but she insists that he is. (We always had this very same conversation about our guinea pigs.)

I asked Cheryl a lot of questions about her life. When she was a young woman, she had aspired to become a doctor. She was not able to get accepted into a medical school, so she taught herself Spanish (which she never had spoken or studied previously) and got accepted into a medical school in Mexico. She studied there for several years and graduated. When she returned from Mexico to the United States, she still did not have the necessary certificates to begin practicing medicine here, but she was determined to take the necessary tests to obtain them.

Then, however, Cheryl began showing symptoms of a rare disease that affects her bones. I don't remember the name or symptoms of this disease, but her bones and joints grow crooked or something. (She does walk and move strangely.) Since this disease is very rare, several years passed until her symptoms developed enough and she visited enough specialists that her disease was diagnosed and treated correctly. In the meantime, she suffered a lot of physical tiredness and weakening. Because of these problems, she did not have the energy to complete her medical studies in the USA and she had to abandon her dream of becoming a doctor.

She got married and settled into an ordinary, non-professional job. One day while she was home and watching television, she was watching some show about animals and she saw a television advertisement about a local vocational school that offered courses to certify for various professions, one of which was "animal control officer." She immediately decided to enroll in such a course, and her husband supported her decision.

She soon discovered, however, that there is a long waiting list to enroll in the animal-control course. She put herself on the waiting list, and in the meantime she began to work at a local animal shelter as a volunteer. Because of her medical training and her volunteer work, she moved up the waiting list faster than most other applicants and finally was able to enroll after waiting about a year.

The animal-control course lasted about a year, and she graduated and received a certificate to work as an animal-control officer. Unfortunately, however, there were no openings in New Jersey. There are very few such jobs, and a position becomes open only when an employed animal-control officer retires or dies. Cheryl therefore continued working as a volunteer, with her husband's support, for another year until a position did become open, and then she was hired.

Since then, for the past five years, she has been working full-time as an animal-control officer for the Bergen County government here in New Jersey. She loves her job.

Every work day, she drives her truck all around Bergen County, responding to phone calls from citizens who need help controlling or rescuing animals. She has dealt with all kinds of animals, from mice to cows. She specializes, however, in rabbits, racoons, opossums, and other such large rodents. Her work involves a lot of running and chasing and grabbing, which is difficult for her because of her physical disease, but she manages to do her work nevertheless.

After spending about a half hour looking at our opossum (Zosia: our BABY), and talking with Cheryl and drinking some lemonade, it was time for our visit to end. We all cooperated to move our opossum from the laundry tub back into his cage, and then I carried the cage as we accompanied Cheryl back out to her truck. I put the cage back into her truck. We posed for some photographs, and then Cheryl drove her truck away until her next visit. She has promised to visit one more time before she releases our opossum into the wild.

My Brother Asks: "Who Killed Baby Girl 'Possum?"

The following message was sent to me by my brother Larry:

C'mon.

Opossums just don't up and die unless they get hit by a car while clinging to their mother's back while crossing a busy highway. I think a cursory investigation is in order.

I immediately have two suspects. Suspect No. 1:

Cheryl was upper-middle aged, like Zosia and I. She was thin, wiry, physically fit. She wore a government uniform. She was serious and professional, but seemed kind and caring.

The first suspect, of course, is the individual who had Baby Girl 'Possum in custody at the time. Mike says she identified herself as "Cheryl", so let's assume she's at least telling the truth about that.

It's an absurdity that an otherwise young and healthy animal would die while in custody and under the care of a veterinarian. One can't help but equate this sort of absurdity to the "deaths by natural causes" of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. Is it any wonder that she would choose to wear a "government uniform" whereas she could probably easily dress-down to jeans and a comfortable shirt if she wanted? And "serious and professional"? There is just something very prison-guardish about this image.

A professional veterinarian supervises her and her care for her animals. Cheryl specializes in taking care of opossums, rabbits, racoons and other such animals. She loves such animals, and she tries to keep them alive and prepare them for release back into a natural environment.

This is a clear case of a woman with a God-complex, deciding which of her animals should live and which should die. And the "vet" is probably drunk or coked up all the time and doesn't care, or his silence is bought with occasional sexual favors. "She tries to keep them alive", but something tells me that her success rate might be disturbingly low. "Oppossum, rabbits, raccoons and other such animals", in other words, animals that nobody really cares about and nobody would miss if they suddenly died.

The sudden change in Baby Boy 'Possum's demeanor, and the obvious hatred he felt for "Cheryl" suggests that she may not be as kind and caring as her publicly outward appearance. Perhaps he witnessed something disturbing and traumatic once the doors of the Animal Control office were closed and locked at night, and his new demonic appearance was actually a call for help to someone he had once loved and trusted.

Suspect No. 2:

He was a little monster who hated us, who wanted to attack and bite us.

Perhaps the trauma of watching her mother and most of his siblings die horrible deaths snapped something deep inside Baby Boy 'Possum. At the very least he could be experiencing Survivor's Guilt which could trigger both suicidal and homicidal tendencies. And who better to take it out on than her preening and overbearing older sister who "just...wouldn't...leave...me...alone."

And let's be honest, who among us hasn't dreamed of a little fratricide every now. I clearly remember as a child wandering from bedside to bedside in the middle of the night, clutching a pillow, wondering which of my peacefully sleeping siblings should not wake up in the morning. Which of my siblings unfairly imposed their will on me the day before. Which of my siblings hit me, or told Mom or Dad on me. Which of my siblings laughed at me, or ripped the tie off my beloved stuffed animal.

Although no one ever talks about it, I'm sure we all did this. And frankly, I'm a little surprised that I never had a chance hallway encounter with any of you, each of us clutching our pillows, feebly making an excuse about the bathroom or sleepwalking, or the thinly veiled excuse about "not being able to sleep."

If Cheryl or any other animal-control officer is reading this, please don't be offended! My brother was just being funny.

This reminds me, however, that after Cheryl told me that the girl opossume had died, I asked how she knew that the opossum was really dead -- and wasn't just "playing 'possum."

Cheryl assured me that the veterinarian very carefully examines every animal that dies in the shelter and that there is no doubt that our baby girl opossum really did die.

Animal Control

On the weekend of June 21-22, Zosia and I saved two baby opossums after their mother and six siblings were killed by a car. One opossum was a girl, and the other was a boy. We brought the girl home at night, right after we found the opossum family. We thought the boy was dying, so we left him in the grass, near his dead mother and siblings. The next morning we found the boy again and saw that he was still struggling to stand but still alive, so we brought him home too. The girl seeemed somewhat larger, and she seemed to want to take care of her little brother. She licked his fur and lay down next to him.

We fell in love with our two new babies immediately and wanted to keep them for at least a week or two or three. They were tiny, cute and curious and sometimes energetic, and we could watch them endlessly. It was interesting and fun for us to feed them. We wanted their lives to be comfortable and interesting. We wondered what they would look like as they grew older and bigger.

Zosia and I imagined that our opossums would be wonderful pets. In the future, we would talk to them all the time. Zosia and I already began to make our human voices sound like cute, little, high-pitched, squeaky opossum voices, and we foresaw that would talk with those voices to the opossums and to each other. We would hold our opossums while we watched television, and we would talk with our opossums and with each other about the shows. I would hold the boy opossum and Zosia would hold the girl opossum as we all would watch television together. We all would watch American Idol together, and my boy opossum and I would agree with each other about who is the best singer, while Zosia and her girl opossum would agree with each other that some other singer is the best singer.

People visiting our home would be so surprised to see that we have opposums as pets! Our guests would be scared by our opossums, wh ich would run around and climb up onto the furniture and onto our guests' laps and would hang by their tails from our chairs. How much fun we would have with our opossums, and how much we all would laugh all the time!

Unfortunately, however, the opossums lived with us only about two and a half days -- only until Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, Zosia and I are not the only people who live in our home. Our home's other people -- the mean and cruel people, the people without our wild imagination and paternal love for animals, the people who are realistic and logical -- called the animal-control authorities, who sent a woman to come and take the animals away from our home on Tuesday, while Zosia and I both were at work.

Zosia and I did know this was going to happen. Zosia got up early that morning and fed milk to both babies with an eyedropper. She said goodbye to both of them. She told the girl opossum to keep taking care of her little brother. She held each one up close to her face, and each opossum kissed Zosia on her lips. Before I left for work, I did not hold them, but I lifted the blanket that covered them and one last time looked at them, lying asleep next to each other. It seemed to me too, because Zosia had told me so many times, that the girl opossum indeed was protecting and taking care of her little brother.

Our home's mean people would be home when the woman came, and I asked the mean people to call me at work so that I could talk with the woman about what would happen to our baby opossums. The woman, named Cheryl, did call me at work. I asked her whether we could see our opossums again in a few weeks, and she promised she would bring them back for us to see them again in a few weeks. Cheryl gave me her phone number, and I wrote it down on a piece of paper that I put into my wallet. I also stored Chery's phone number in my computer at work, so that I always would have that phone number even if I lost my wallet.

The next day after work, Zosia and I borrowed a shovel from our neighbor and we drove back to the scene of the accident. The dead mother opossum was still lying by the side of the road, where I had left her. About 15 feet away there was an area with some trees and bushes. Probably the mother had been living in that area with her babies. Maybe she could not find enough food there for herself and her babies and so had tried to cross the road to find another place with more food. Anyway, we we dug a deep hole near that area and buried the mother opossum. Zosia and I stood for a while and said a prayer that the mother's spirit always would stay in that place with the spirits of her six dead children who had died with her near that place on Saturday night. We prayed that the mother's spirit would understand that two of her babies had survived and that those two babies always would remember and love her and be grateful to her for giving birth to them and for feeding and taking care of them as babies, no matter how far away the babies might be moved away, to some large forest far away, no matter how big and adult the opossums grew up to be.

Zosia and I drive past that place every morning when I drive her to work. During the following weeks, Zosia and I thought about and talked about our baby opossums every day. Zosia remembered how the sister opossum took care of her little brother, licking her brother's fur, showing her little brother how to drink milk from our eyedropper, showing her little brother not to be afraid of us two enormous people who had saved them and loved them. Zosia cried a lot -- just like our own guardian angels cry about all of us -- when she thought of her little girl opossum taking care of the little brother opossum.

I couldn't cry, but I felt very sad that I was not able to enjoy the happy future I had imagined with our opossums. How interesting and fun it would have been. But now there always would be one part of me that always will be sad. I always will miss my little opossums, especially the little boy opossu m I fou nd still alive, still trying to stand up in the grass on Sunday morning.

Several times during July, I called Cheryl to arrange for the promised reunion with our baby opossums. Cheryl could come only on a weekday during work hours, not on a weekend or evening. Cheryl also would be away on leave several days during July. So, we were not able to arrange a meeting one week and then the next week and then a third week.

In every phone conversation, Cheryl told me that both opossums both were still alive and healthy and growing bigger. I told Zosia this good news.

Cheryl and I agreed that I would call her on July's last Monday, July 28, to arrange a meeting during the last week of July. I did call Cheryl on that Monday, and she told me she had some bad news -- the girl opossum had died for an unknown reason during that previous weekend. The boy opossum was still alive and healthy, however, and Cheryl agreed to bring him to our home on Wednesday, July 30.

I immediately phoned Zosia at work and told her all the news. Zosia was shocked and broken-hearted that her baby girl had died. Zosia asked her supervisor at work for the entire day of leave from work on Wednesday, and I told our office administrator that I would take some time off on that day too.

Cheryl did not know yet when on Wednesday she would bring the opossum to our home. She could not plan her day. She is busy all day every day driving a van around the area getting animals that have been found. When she had some time during Wednesday, she would call me, and then I would rush home and Cheryl would come to visit us.

Finally, Wednesday came. Zosia was home all day from work. I was at work, but I kept my cell phone in my shirt pocket all day, so that I could answer immediately the phone call from Cheryl. In the middle of the morning and then at about noon, I called Cheryl, and she assured me that she had our opossum in her van and that she still planned to bring him to our home.

Finally, at about 3:30 she phoned me at work and said she would come in about a half an hour. I told my supervisor that I had to run home to see my opossum, and I rushed home.

Zosia and I sat together on the steps in front of our home and waited for Cheryl. Finally we saw the animal-control van approaching on the street and then parking right in front of our home. We have a fire hydrant right in front of our home, but because Cheryl's van is a government, law-enforcement vehicle, she parked right in front of the fire hydrant and did not worry about a parking ticket.

This was the first time Zosia and I had seen Cheryl, because we both had been at work when she came to our home to get the opossums. Cheryl was upper-middle aged, like Zosia and I. She was thin, wiry, physically fit. She wore a government uniform. She was serious and professional, but seemed kind and caring.

She got out of her van, walked around to the passenger seat, opened the door, and grabbed a cage that had been lying on the passenger seat. We all were standing on the sidewalk. Zosia and I looked into the cage, but we could not see anything but some newspapers and a food dish. We asked Cheryl to bring the cage into our home. Cheryl was reluctant, but she agreed, and we all came into our home, into our kitchen. This is the same room where we had kept the two babies while they had lived with us.

Before Cheryl took the opossum out of the cage, she warned us that we could not hold or pet him. She told us he needs to become a wild animal and so we should not try to make him friendly to humans. She told us he will try to bite us. She told us she herself would hold him, but that she would take him out of the cage and let us look at him and photograph him.

We placed some newspaper on a kitchen stool, and then Cheryl put a thick glove onto one hand and reached into the cage and, after some effort, grabbed the opossum by the tail and placed him on the newspaper, on the stool, for us to see.

Zosia and I both shared a strong em otional reaction to this sight. We felt sorry for the little opossum. He had been hiding under the newspapers inside the cage, and he was terrified when he was grabbed by his tail and pulled out of his dark hiding place and was placed on a high stool in the middle of a well-lighted room, in front of several huge people. He looked very scared. He opened his little mouth and showed his little teeth, and his little face made an angry expression and all his little muscles tightened, but his little eyes showed that he was completely afraid. Zosia and I wondered whether he rememberd us and our kitchen, his former home.

He was bigger, maybe twice as big as we remembered him. And his hair was much longer. His hair was long, scraggly and messy. His hair was wild and scary. And his ears were large and their insides were very black. And the skin around his eyes was very dark. Now he did not look cute. He looked pathetic, ugly and horrid. He was a little monster who hated us, who wanted to attack and bite us.

I felt disappointed and confused. I had to reform all my feelings and opinions.

Cheryl answered all our questions patiently. She didn't know why the sister opossum had died, but many baby opossums do die. Perhaps some die from internal injuries that never heal. Every year she raises about 20 opossums, and some simply do die for no known reason. She keeps them in a big building behind the local animal-shelter. A professional veterinarian supervises her and her care for her animals.

Cheryl specializes in taking care of opossums, rabbits, racoons and other such animals. She loves such animals, and she tries to keep them alive and prepare them for release back into a natural environment. During the previous week she had released seven rabbits that she had raised from baby bunnies. She releases her animals into forests, in the western hills far away from Hackensack. She releases opossums at the end of September.

She feeds them apples, yoghurt, cottage cheese, cat food. She put our opo ssum int o a rather small cage to bring him to our home, but in her facility the animals live in much larger cages that give them room to walk around freely. She had kept our two opossums together, and they had lived together peacefully.

As I looked at the opossum in our kitchen and as I imagined the life that he had lived with his sister and the life he lives alone now and will live in the forest, I quickly fell back in love with him. He was a tough, determined, smart survivor. He never gave up and never will give up.

I recognized now that for an opossum his age, he is unusually good-looking, even handsome. He is like a young teen-ager, obviously akward but trying to look strong, with wild and rebellious hair. He hates to be controlled and reflexively wants to bite his controller. He thinks a lot of profound thoughts and looks forward to living freely. Now I appreciated him fully.

I understood that he misses his big sister, who had comforted and advised him. In a few weeks, when Cheryl releases him alone into the forest, he will be alone, helpless and confused. I now feel sure, however, that because he is so handsome, sociable and clever, he soon will find an opossum girlfriend who will show him how to live in that forest. Just as he loved and learned from his mother and sister, he will love and learn from his girlfriend. He will survive and will live free and happily to an old age. Just like I am living with Zosia!

Zosia still worries a lot about the opossum. She worries that he will not be able to find food and a warm place for the winter and that he will be attacked by bigger animals. But Zosia does agree with me that he is cute and adorable. Zosia sees him with a mother's eyes that sees only cuteness and more cuteness and even more cuteness.

We looked at and photographed and discussed the opossum in our kitchen for about 20 minutes, and then Cheryl put him back into his cage. We all walked out together to Cheryl's van and said goodbye. She told us to call at the end o f August, and she will bring our opossum back for another visit. Zosia and I are looking forward to that next reunion, to see how much he has grown and become ready for release back into nature.

Every morning when we drive to work, we pass by the place where we found and then buried the mother, and we share a sympathetic thought about her and for all her children. Her family still lives in the hearts and memories of Zosia, of me, and of that mother's one surviving child.

Baby Opossums Rescued

Last Saturday night we had a big party in our home. It was the birthday of Egidijus, Luka's boyfriend, and so we had a lot of Lithuanians. We had ten guests who wanted to stay and play poker and make a lot of noise and then sleep in our home.

Zosia had to work in her hotel on Sunday, so Zosia and I decided that we would go to her hotel and sleep there. The hotel has special, low rates for employees.

We left our home at about 1:30 a.m. and were driving to the hotel. As we were driving on the road that merges onto a highway, we saw that a previous car had hit an opossum that now was lying in the middle of the road. As we slowed down to drive around the opossum, we saw that there were a lot of baby opossums lying on the road next to the large opossum. I parked the car at the edge of the road, and we got out to look closer. I stood to block the road so that no coming cars would hit the opossums.

It was a horrible sight. The large opossum -- the size of a very large, fat cat -- obviously was a mother and there were about six baby opossums lying next to her stomach. The mother was unconscious, but there was no obvious trauma or blood on or around her body. It looked like she had given birth to a litter right in the middle of the road. The six babies next to her stomach all looked dead.

There were two babies scattered a couple of feet away from her, and they were alive and struggling to move. Zosia picked those two up and laid them in the grass next to the road.

I then picked up the mother by her tail and laid her in the grass, about a foot away from the two live babies. I left the rest of the babies in the road. I wondered whether the mother was playing dead or was really dead, but I figured that the six babies must really be dead.

Zosia and I then got into our car and continued to drive toward her hotel. As we were driving, we discussed the horrible situation and then decided to go back and see whether we might save the two babies. We drove back and found the scene as we had left it.

It looked as if one of the live babies was crawling through the grass toward the mother. The other baby seemed to be unable to stand up on its feet and seemed to be moaning in pain.

I found an empty paper cup, with a lid, in the grass. I used the lid to shove the crawling baby into the cup and then put the lid onto the cup. To my surprise, the baby in the cup pushed the lid off and started to crawl out. The baby was much stronger than I expected, and I had to put the lid on tight. We got into the car, and I gave the cup to Zosia. She tried to peek into the cup, and again the baby bolted up to the top of the cup and almost leaped out.

We drove home, where the party was still going strong. We took the cup down to our garage, to our basement, and poured the baby possum into a plastic laundry tub. We spread out some newspaper and poured some milk into a saucer and coaxed the baby to drink the milk. The baby just raced around the bottom of the tub and didn't drink the milk. Some of the partyers came down to look, and we told our story.

We left the baby in the tub and got back into our car and drove to the hotel. On our way, we again passed the same location, and I saw the mother still lying motionless in the same place.

Zosia's hotel did not have a free room, so we tried to call all the other Marriott hotels in the area, and none of them had a room available at the employee rate. Then we went to another hotel, which also was full, and then we were able to get a free room in a third hotel. By the time we finally got into bed, it was about 3 a.m.

We woke up at about 8 a.m. and checked out of the hotel and drove back home. (Zosia was supposed to be begin working at the hotel at 10 a.m.) While Zosia fussed with the baby opossum, I drove to our grocery store and bought an eye-dropper. We then fed the baby some milk.

Zosia dressed for work, and we got into our car and drove again toward Zosia's hotel. Again we passed the same spot, and I saw the large opossum lying motionless in the grass. The six babies in the middle of the road had been crushed by passing cars. I parked our car and went to look at the other baby that I had left the previous night. I expected that this baby would be dead by now, but I saw that it was still struggling to stand and still seemed to be moaning, just as it had been doing before.

I decided that I had to try to save this baby too. I picked it up out of the grass and brought it to Zosia. We then drove to the hotel. She ran in and brough out a glass of water and a spoon and fed the baby a little bit of water. She then went back into the hotel, and I drove the baby possum home. I just put the baby into the passenger seat and then was surprised to see then baby energetically crawl up the seat back. I had to push the baby back down several times as I drove back home.

I put the second baby into the tub with the first and fed it some milk with the eye-dropper. Some of the Lithuanian guests who were awake came down to look and to hear my further story.

Anyway, both opossums turned out to be uninjured and healthy. They learned to drink and eat from the eye-dropper. One is a boy and the other is a girl. We kept them for a few days and had a lot of fun playing with them. They apparently were just learning to walk, and they were super cute as they walked around like babies. We adored them.

Before we fell too much in love with them, however, we turned them over to a couple of local ladies who have a lot of experience raising baby opossums and then releasing them into the wild. We will go to visit our opossums in a few weeks to see how they have grown. At about the beginning of September, the two ladies will release them into a place in the woods where there are a lot of berry bushes, and they should be able to survive.

Below are some pictures of our two possums and an Internet picture of a mother carrying a bunch of baby possums. Opossums are like kangaroos. The mother carries them in a pouch for about four weeks and then carries them on her back while they are growing.

Apparently the mother was carrying eight babies on her back and was trying to cross the road when she was hit by a car. The two that survived apparently dropped off right before the collision or flew away safely at the moment of collision.