more on the dead 'possum

[Really disgusting post—you have been warned]

Regarding the possum that Loopy posted about...there's more to the story of course.

Snog was very proud of himself for killing the possum at his advanced age and he strutted around like a big macho stud. Of course I made him leave it, shut the dogs in the house and went to dispose of it with the snow shovel.

(Note: Loopy claims to be the man but I'm the one who operates the power drill and disposes of dead animals and live insects. Of course, I don't believe in someone being the man. I'm just sayin'.)

So the first time I dumped him in the woods the crows dragged him right out into the middle of the driveway. The next day after Loopy headed out to work, I got a plaintive call: "Loooooopyyyyy, the possum's lying in the middle of the driveway and he's LOOKING at me!" She made me promise to get rid of him before she came home that night.

So back I went with the snow shovel--fyi, animals are harder and harder to snow-shovel as they become less and less, uh, physically coherent. So all I could do was kind of shove/roll him out of the driveway and into the leaves.

So then as she described, he was removed from the leaves and spread out on the stump—Loopy mentioned crows but I'm pretty sure it's a crow/raccoon team effort. Ugh.

But I'm not going to shovel him anywhere now because (1) he is DEFINITELY not coherent enough and (2) I don't even want to know how he smells and (3) I'm sort of fascinated by the disintegration/dissassembly process... specifically, all that's left now is some bones, some scraps, and the whole head and the tail.

Specifically, the tail.

Nobody wants to eat the tail, even though it's thick and meaty looking.

I wonder why. I mean, we think the possum tail is gross, but then we think the whole thing is gross. So what's stopping the crows and raccoons and such?

Just wondering.