Playing possum

I was pushing Helena in the swing late yesterday afternoon (while sweating) and the dog started barking herself into an absolute frenzy in the back corner of the yard. I ignored her for a few minutes, assuming she and the neighbors' dog were having one of their yappy "chats," but then I realized there was no other dog. I walked over to investigate and there, huddled in the corner and so well-camouflaged that I had to stare intently to see it, was a baby possum. It looked quite dead until Sasha got in its face and yip-yapped, at which point it opened its tiny mouth, bared its tiny teeth, and made a teeny hissing sound. I took the dog inside and when I came back out, it looked really dead again. Like eyes wide open, no visible breathing DEAD. Right around that time the husband got home, and while he accumulated various defense mechanisms to take outside with him to investigate (including a can of Bear Attack Spray) just in case a rabid possum mother decided to come save her joey (they are marsupials!)I called a local wildlife rehabilitation place I remembered reading about in the paper a year or so ago. The lady was very helpful and invited me to throw a towel over him (joey not husband) tape him in a box and drive him across town where they would be glad to take him. I was really hoping they had some sort of on-call possum wrangler who would come to my house and do that for me. Alas, they did not. And while I have a soft, warm spot for All Creatures of Our God and King (except roaches) I am not Francis of Assisi. I had three hungry human children and a meeting to get to. So, what finally ended up happening is that the husband took a spray bottle with water and sprayed it on the REALLY dead looking baby possum and he came to life and went running the entire length of our fence and into the next door neighbors' yard. I felt a pang of remorse, especially when I googled 'baby possum in my back yard' and saw all these people who make their own baby possum formula and nurse them back to health and then lovingly release them into the wild where they have a rather tragic life expectancy of one year.

A few days ago Hudson scored a free comic book at Williams-Sonoma (a promotion for the new superhero-shaped cupcake pans), and he has spent quite a bit of time poring over it, making up names for the superheroes he doesn't recognize (which includes all superheroes except Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and I-Ron Man, as he pronounces it). He named one guy Giant Man (I think it was the Hulk) and another one Ursus Major, which I thought was a pretty good superhero name. At one point he asked me, "Do you think I-Ron Man would say P.U. if he smelled my feet?" and I said "Undoubtedly" and he thought that was great news. What was not such great news was when, a little while later, he was not helping Harper pick up in a manner that she found acceptable, and she said, "Hudson! You may not say 'Reginald Von Hoobie Doobie' until you have picked up the books!"

This afternoon we went to the grocery store and the lady bagging our groceries was asking Harper lots of questions and she asked her if she and Hudson were twins (which I think rather horrified Harper) then she asked if they were best friends (having watched them giggling and playing and generally enjoying one another) and Harper was quick to answer "No!" but she is wrong. They are best friends and they delight in one another about 90% of the time, and, even though it is much louder and rowdier than those days when Harper couldn't seem to enjoy him, I am so thankful for the way it is now. When I was putting her to bed just now, Harper said, "I am going to wake Hudson up in the morning and we are going to continue our hullabaloo!" We welcome you, sweet hullabaloo.