the ark of mark

Saturday was kind of a big day for me.  Eventful compared to most, anyway.

Bright and early I gathered with 12,000 of my closest friends in Louisville to run a half marathon.  Well, some were there to run a full marathon, but most of us felt that thirteen miles was sufficient for this particular hot spring day.  (We felt that a second thirteen miles had little to offer that we wouldn’t have already gained running the first thirteen).  As the United Auto Workers sign said along the course, we were “United in Solidarity,” which I’m pretty sure is the same thing as saying we were together in togetherness.  The Fellowship of the Gaunt.

Here we are.  I’m right behind the thin one in the running shorts:

Some combination of the heat and a general malaise from a lingering cold kept me from running as fast as I’d hoped.  My thirteen miles were comprised of eight miles of racing and high-fiving kids along the sidewalk, followed by five miles of bitter thoughts while trying to think up a good excuse to quit.  If my hotel room and shower had been at the ten mile mark instead of the finish line I might not have made it.

So I ran my thirteen miles, ate a complimentary bagel, and drove home to mow the yard.  Then the day got interesting.

As I was putting away the mower I noticed a face peeking at me from underneath the overturned wheelbarrow I keep tucked away beside a storage shed.  The face of an opossum.  (Let the record show that I have demonstrated the technical spelling of “opossum” and will henceforth spell the word the sensible way).

I am neither opposed to possums nor posed to opossums.  While not exactly a majestic deer, I figure possums pretty much keep to themselves, so what’s the harm?  Upon reflection I decided that our yard is sufficiently short of a vast wooded expanse that I probably needed to evict the possum.  I figured I could flip the wheelbarrow over with a rake and leap out of the way before the possum could, well, play possum in a menacing manner.  I figured it would eventually go hide someplace for the rest of the day and seek a new home overnight.

Well.

Let’s just say my blogging senses are not well developed or I would have had a camera at the ready.  When I overturned the wheelbarrow I learned that this was not just any old random neighborhood possum.

This was the “Octomom” of the possum set.  She bared her teeth at me, surrounded by a roiling mass of baby possums.  Pink noses and nasty gray fur abounded.  I was staring at more beady little eyes than the Senate cafeteria has on Baked Potato Day.

While I failed to get a live action photo the internet has helped me give you a sense of the scene, except Octopossum looked madder than this:

Let’s just say that for the rest of my life I will practice safe wheelbarrow storage techniques wherein the wheelbarrow can not be mistaken for shelter, especially by a marsupial with a brain the size of an almond.

Eventually Octopossum and her babies trundled underneath a nearby utility trailer I use to ferry mulch and yard debris.  I returned a half-hour later and they were gone, hopefully to some safe and more remote location where Mama can teach her babies the time honored possum traditions such as lurking around at night, being omnivorous, and having just really ugly tails.

Go figure.  A day that I will forever remember for a possum encounter started with me being roadkill.