On Monday, April 27, Cheryl phoned and informed me that her boss at the animal shelter had decided to release our opossum into the wild on Tuesday night. Cheryl and I arranged to meet on Tuesday evening after work so that Zosia and I could see our baby one last time.
Cheryl and her husband Alan drove to our home in their car, with our opossum in a cage in the back seat. Alan parked on the street and pulled the cage out and placed it onto the trunk. The cage was covered by a white blanket.
When Alan pulled the blanket away, Zosia and I were surprised to see how the opossum had grown and developed adult features. He had grown to more than twice the size he had been when we had seen him in October. Alan says the opossum now weighs about ten and a half pounds.
The opossum's face has turned rounded and completely white, which is common in adults. The face seems softer, and the nose seems to be less long and pointed.
We took a lot of photographs, but we got only three as a result. Our family camera has disappeared, so we borrowed our daughter Luka's camera that we did not know how to use properly. We took a lot of pictures through the cage's wire door, and the camera focused on the wire at the front of the cage and not on the opossum at the back of the cage. It's a good thing that Alan opened the door for a while, or else we would not have any photographs of the opossum at all.
I enjoyed talking with Alan, who has developed a real interest in his wife's work saving animals. He has learned a lot about opossums, because that species is one of Cheryl's specialties. Alan and Cheryl both are quite talkative and nice.
The third picture shows Zosia and me standing at the sides of the cage. You can see the opossum's shape vaguely in the shadows, so you have an idea of his size. He is the size of a dog.
Unfortunately, none of the photographs shows the opossum's tail, which was long and thick, like a rope.
Cheryl has been raising our opossum and another male opossum of about the same age. She has kept them in separate cages. They have not been able to see each other, but they could smell and hear each other, because the cages were adjacent.
After Cheryl showed our opossum to us, she gave both opossums to her boss, who then drove them out into the country and released them into a woods when the sky had turned dark. Opossums are mostly nocturnal animals.
Our opossum seemed healthy and fat, so we think he will be able to survive for quite a while even though he might have trouble finding food at first. We think that the spirit of the opossum's dead sister has continued to console and advise her little brother. We think he always will remember his opossum mother, and we hope that he will remember Zosia and me, who were his human parents for a couple of days.
