In the middle of the night, I get that question -- are you awake maybe?
Ed is standing over me with laptop in hand. Surely bad news? Or maybe a message calling him out to sea? A new discovery worthy of immediate sharing?
None of those. He is showing me an internet picture of an animal that resembles a giant white rat.
We have one outside, in one of the crab apples. It's a white opossum. It's very rare. Want to see it?
Under normal (meaning daytime) circumstances, of course I would be curious. At 2:30 a.m. (Ed often stays up this late), I hesitate. Warm bed, cold night, white opossum. Hmmmm....
The white opossum wins.
Ed thinks he's very attractive. (His cells aren't producing pigment hence the ghostly white color.) Of course, Ed would find most animals that visit the farmette gloriously amazing. But we are also aware of the threat they pose. Not to us. Opossum love digging their 50 teeth into a sleepy chicken's neck and sucking the blood out for a delicious evening aperitif. We've had that happen, right inside the coop at dusk, before Ed had a chance to close up the hens for the night. Opossum are nocturnal, but in winter they get hungry and they come out at unpredictable times. We are on alert! Ed puts a brick by the coop door to keep the hens in for a longer spell in the morning.
Of course, by daybreak, when I'm out to feed the animals...
... the opossum is gone.
For now.
Breakfast? Well, I swallow my pride (it is not a perfect apple cake!) and have a slice of that cake for breakfast. It's not so bad that it should be ditched to the chicken feed bin.
We are in the middle of a cool-down, but the progression toward more wintery days is gradual. Today, the sun is still out and the day is just a tad cooler. (60F yesterday, 45F today; or -- a drop from 15C to 7C.) It really is fine for a walk in our local park.
The kids at pick-up are bouncy and in good spirits.
We move smoothly through our Friday routines -- dance, violin, and a meet up with the youngest sib...
And by evening, I am home, with just Ed. Well, and the three cats that visit us here. No white leucitic marsupial tonight. Let's hope he has found a snug winter hideout elsewhere.
with love...
