meet pogo

When I was growing up, we had some unconventional pets in our house. We had rodents: mice, gerbils, briefly a guinea pig. My sister's little gray mouse was named Fuzzy, and he was in the circus. We all were~ I was a trampoline and trapeze diva, my sister was a clown, and Fuzzy was her sidekick. He walked a tightrope and dazzled the masses without fail. It's true life! Before the High Flyers became serious, famous performers~ our very own Cirque du Soleil~ they put on a very home-grown show in the ringleader's back yard, and we were stars.

We had a juvenile delinquent crow named Binky for about two days~ he was messy and loud and fond of mulberries. He had to go elsewhere. We had a squirrel named Hickory~ our dog, Zipper, found baby Hickory in the woods on campus after a storm, and when my dad went to investigate, a teensy lost critter ran right up the leg of his corduroy pants. Hickory let all of us hold him when he was small, but pretty soon my dad was the only one who could handle him. He had his own little room, with branches and things, and my dad would hide food for him to forage. We thought he had epilepsy, but it turned out to be a case of Too Many Sunflower Seeds.

We had parakeets and newts and rabbits and toads. But mostly we had Pogo. Lucky Pogo Possum Guy. Someone found him in the road, a tiny little bean of a thing, separated from his marsupial mama~ she knew that we had fostered Hickory, so she brought us the wee lonely possum. He was my favorite. Unlike Hickory, he never unfriended me. He would fall asleep cupped in my hands, with his nose tucked in. He smelled like dog paws, which smell like corn chips. And he had those fabulous animal instincts that told him to act scary if need be~ I'd reach into his nest to scoop him up and he'd turn around and make his most frightening open-mouthed possum face... until he smelled that I was me, his friend, and then he would waddle up my arm, sit on my shoulder, and snuffle his nose in my ear.

I was so sad when we had to let him go. We had to let a real rehabber teach him about the great outdoors before he got too big, but I wanted to keep him forever. He was the Opossum O'Love and I'm glad my hippie parents let him stay with us for a while~