Nature walk.
Topic: Nature
[index] [bot]22:32 Saturday, 08 March, 2003
Ithaca, NY
Thundercat is over to hang out again tonight. I picked her up and brought her back to my place, and as I was backing in, I caught furry movement in my review mirror, so had to look closer. Now, I must explain the set-up of my apartment building. It's two storeys, with two larger apartments downstairs, and four upstairs. So every one of the upstairs apartments has a corner-full of windows, and I got lucky enough to get the corner that faces south and west. I need lots of light. The parking lot is almost at the level of the top storey, so to get to the 'ground' floor, one must go down a set of outside stairs. And to get to the top floor, one walks up this mild ramp to the deck which surrounds the whole top storey. Kinda weird. And fun when it's icy. But, anyway, I'm seeing this furry critter running up the ramp behind the car, and, upon further inspection, exclaim to Thundercat that it's an opossum. As we're climbing out, I realize that that ramp is the only way on or off the top deck, and the opossum will be trapped when we go up. So I told Thundercat to go around one way, and I'd go the other, and see what the opossum would do when it was cornered. We were not trying to corner it in a mean way, mind you, just in a curious way. We figured it might try to play dead, which I'm told opossums do when they feel they're in danger. So we went around either side of the building, until the opossum knew that it was stuck between us, and then we just stood still to watch it. I huddled as close to the building as I could, and we watched it peek over the edge several times, intimidated by the ten-foot drop into the dark. Then it watched us for a little while, trying to figure out what we were up to, and it was all very serene and personal. I liked that moment. It was like our little nature walk for the night. Realizing its position, but apparently having decided that we were not dangerous, it hesitantly walked towards and past me on the deck, scurrying rather quickly once it was fully past me, the way you'd expect a nervous person to do when sneaking around somewhere. So we followed it back along the deck, and at the corner it considered climbing down, but decided that was too daunting, so continued around to the next corner. It was now on the last stretch of the deck to get it to the ramp, so if it had only turned the corner, it would have found the way down. But instead it decided it was fully trapped and would only end up going around in circles forever, so may as well try to climb now or never. It climbed over the edge, scratching its nails into the wood for traction, and using that rat-tail very effectively to hold the railing. Unfortunately, there was no post on the corner that reached the ground, so once it had gone down a foot and half, it was forced to turn upside-down onto the ceiling of the lower deck. Despite their resemblance to mice, opossums are not as agile, and this one quickly lost its grip and plopped down into the soggy grass ten feet below, squirmed to get upright, and scrambled into the bushes to hide. No harm done, but funny to watch. And so neat to see an animal that close. :)
[index] [top]
