We moved here from Northridge, where our house lay beneath one of the noisiest and most traveled air lanes for small planes and helicopters in the Valley. When we moved to Moorpark, we were pleasantly surprised at the silence that prevailed in the evening—except for the constant barking of our own two dogs alerting the entire town to the repeated presence of an unmoving opossum glued to the wall.
Our first dogs, Sparky the schnauzer and Kizzie the kooikerhondje, were immune to our midnight pleas to stop barking and come inside. Our sweet, docile Sparky had proven to be a serial murderer of birds, known for his harmless demeanor and deadly fast bite. Too many birds lost their little lives because they didn't understand that the stupid-looking gray thing was really a bird-killing machine. Kizzie, a rare spaniel species, made plenty of noise but let her buddy do the dirty work.
As I was growing up outside Chicago, the tale was told many a-time of my childhood schnauzer Brave Beau and the Delicious Opossum. Our housekeeper, Loucille, haled from a backwater town in Louisiana. She grew up one of nine children who were quite literally dirt poor. Poke salad sometimes kept them alive and small game, including the occasional delicacy of opossum stew, often graced the dinner table.
She lived with us most of the week and did most of the cooking. She shared some of her southern recipes with the family, my favorite being her special fried chicken. She did not share with us her fondness for wild animals as dinner.
One day, just before I arrived home from school, my mother walked in from shopping only to see blood all over the kitchen. Horrified, she yelled for Lou to see if she was all right. Lou had just finished loading the basement freezer with opossum pieces to take home later. The two women worked furiously to clean up all signs of critter violence before I arrived and they succeeded. Apparently, Beau had cornered this opossum and was furiously barking for Lou to come and do something about it. She grabbed a snow shovel and that was the end of the opossum. She then brought it inside, skinned it, prepared it, sliced and diced it, wrapped it up and froze it. We were all quite proud of our little schnauzer.
Here in Moorpark, our late schnauzer's reputation was legend among the local opossum population. Those who had stalked our yard some years ago had the good sense to act like real opossums: stay conscious, display their many rows of razor-sharp teeth, and hiss. It never really came to blows.
Last year, Zack, our terrier-mix, bolted out of the house in the middle of the night, apparently having heard a creature moving around in the yard. It was a teensy little baby opossum. Unlike its predecessors, it did pass out and fell into my yard, appearing to be dead. It was barely breathing and could fall prey to an ugly death by dog at any moment. I could hear the commotion, and ran outside. Stella was mostly running around the periphery excitedly shouting something like, "The opossum is dead! The opossum is dead," but instead of doing her doggy duty of finishing him off, she scurried right back inside and settled into the couch.
Zack was going crazy. I was terrified he would eat the poor little thing. I woke up my husband, Steve, and he took control. We thought the baby opossum was dead so he placed it in a plastic bag and in the trash. Early the next morning, he awoke with a terrible thought. What if the opossum had been playing dead?
He raced out to the garbage can and retrieved the plastic bag. The opossum had bitten through it to create an air hole. Once removed and placed upright, the little guy skittered away. Whew! Close one.
Until a few weeks later when the entire scene repeated itself. The only difference was the baby had grown some; still dumb, just bigger. And then it happened a third time after it was nearly full grown.
This year, when a baby opossum fainted and fell into our yard only to be surrounded by frenetically barking dogs, it made a loud squealing noise of sheer terror. I really believed it had been hurt by Zack, even though Z had always been all bark and no bite. Stella had, by that time, high-tailed it back into the nice, safe house.
I awakened my daughter, our resident farm animal expert, who bravely pronounced the critter to be alive and unhurt, so we locked the dogs in the house and the traumatized opossum was long gone by the morning.
Unfortunately, these events usually occur around 2:30 a.m. and our neighbors must be mighty annoyed when all hell breaks loose in our backyard. I apologize for the barking and the squealing, and the hissing, and more barking and my yelling at the dogs.
Can't wait until the cold weather sets in and it gets quiet again.