seperis

I still remember the first time I saw an opossum. I'm from the west where we don't have them, so when I saw this big grey streak run out of the outside stairwell of the high rise I was living in in Virginia, I didn't know what it was at first. I remember it flashing through my mind: "what's wrong with that cat's tail... er, holy shit that's the biggest rat I've ever seen!... oh, so that's what an opposum looks like outside a book, huh."

I was fascinated because they were one of those things I saw illustrations and mentions of all the time but had never actually seen.

It was sort of like my first trip to the east coast when I was 14 and saw fireflies for the first time, only, you know, uglier.

Opossums are not especially attractive, no. But I have to give them props as a marsupial that actually increased its range when North and South America were reconnected. South America had a lot of marsupials that are no longer with us, but the opossum came north and flourished.

It does seem sometimes that the most beautiful creatures are the ones that demand a pristine glacial lake, or a soil type that exists in only one place on Earth, or a range of ten thousand square miles of unbroken forest to survive. On the other hand, we do tend to devalue what's in our face, stealing our garbage or pooping on our golf courses. Ivory-billed woodpeckers would be worse than pigeons as a thriving urban species.

But who are we to talk? We humans are everywhere, spreading disease and pests and filth and concrete, and the prettiest of us is still a badly dressed ape. Canada geese have much better karma.