Mickey the Possum
A while back I use to wake up around 3 am every night. I would go to the kitchen window, try to adjust my eyes to the darkness outside to see if the possum was there. She always was. She would search amongst the nuts that the unruly birds and squirrels had spilled over from the six bird feeders I had hanging from the elderberry tree in my back yard. One day she just dropped her babies around the house and I found a few in my kitchen. Evidently they came through the cat door I had installed a few years back. I put them out but one, Mickey, kept coming back. I called him Mickey because both his ears were black and the rest of his body white.
I would be awakened by noise in the middle of the night and see him eating the cat food from their double stand bowls I had brought upstairs in my bedroom. He didn't bother me and would leave as soon as I would sit up and look at him. One night, I guess the cats had eaten the bowls clean of food, I was jolted out of my sleep with a light bite on my finger. I look up and who do I see - Mickey starring straight at me with almost pleading eyes and wanted me to feed him. I got up but he ran away.
Months passed without news of Mickey until yesterday. I was cleaning my car in the garage. I must have walked passed him a few times without noticing his body laying near the entrance. He almost startled me. For a slip-second I thought he might be sleeping because he was in a resting position but then I thought he would have moved by now with all the commotion. I kneeled and looked closely and saw that he was dead.
I dug a whole in my backyard next to Ganesh's grave and placed him in it. I thanked him for having come into my life and made it just a little bit richer.
R.I.P. Mickey and thank you.
