He weighs about seven pounds, and I carry him by his tail. He hangs, swinging like a gray lantern. He’s a Virginia opossum, the only marsupial on this continent. 

I found him in the yard, corpselike and breathing, on the 40 acres in northwest Florida where I live. 

His tongue hangs out of his mouth and his lips curl at the edges like a tragedy mask as he performs death. His little fleshy pink fingers curl into his palms. A patch of red fur on his rump tells me he’s bleeding. I won’t risk my hands to check for injuries. 

I carry him across the yard, sidestepping pecans. I lay him in the next pasture, which slopes into a swamp where a beaver hutch stands like an administrative office. The swamp cuts through half the property. Another opossum lives in the barn with the cats. The dogs cornered an opossum in the pear tree last summer. 

White herons wade through the foot-high waters and a small blue kingfisher poises on a tree stump. Canadian geese watch as I leave. 

***

An hour later, I’m back. I stand sentry over the opossum. A vulture sits in a pine tree above our heads. 

A few moments ago, I’d glanced out the window and two of the bald, black-feathered scavengers were following my opossum. He’d bounced at them, bared his teeth, and one fluttered its wings, but they remained. 

Nature is cruel but efficient, I’d tried thinking. I shook off the feeling of needing to save him. 

But here I am, now on the phone with the wildlife sanctuary, describing how quickly my opossum is breathing, how his belly expands like a bellows, and there’s blood on his backside, and should I bring him in? Maddy Muir, the 27-year-old intake coordinator, says he sounds like he could use some help. 

My dad helps ladle my opossum into a cat carrier. My opossum has swooned dead again (and continues to breathe). 

Then I drive with the opossum in my car. 

Then we’re stopping for gas when my warning light flicks on. 

Then a woman taps on my car window, and I roll it down. She glances toward the gas station as she asks for any cash I could spare. I offer to buy her food, and she gives me her order — chicken thighs (not legs), a side of potato wedges, a Sprite, and a honey biscuit. She says she’s not allowed inside the gas station. 

I tell her I’ll see what I can do, but that I need to gas up first. I’ve got an injured opossum in my passenger seat who needs medical attention. 

Her gaze snaps back to mine, then she leans forward to look into my car and takes several steps back. 

I fill the tank and then leave my window down. I come back out of the gas station with two fried chicken thighs and two sides of potato wedges. Escambia County Sheriff’s officers have the woman in handcuffs on the far side of the parking lot. She’s arrested for trespassing. 

I leave the gas station with my opossum and a greasy, sweaty bag of chicken and potatoes. 

***

At the Wildlife Sanctuary of Northwest Florida, we’re the second opossum to arrive that day. The sanctuary is two and a half acres of wilderness and aviaries holding barred owls, bald eagles, American kestrels, other raptors native to Florida’s skies. Oak trees spread their canopies overhead, and the temperature drops in the shade. A path winds between the aviaries and follows along a pond where turtles disappear beneath the surface. 

I’ve named my opossum O’Henry, and the sanctuary staff say they’ll write it on her intake form. O’Henry the O’possum. 

I can call any day to check on her progress, the woman who answers the door tells me. She takes O’Henry in the cat carrier into the sanctuary, then returns with it empty. I miss my opossum already. I ask the woman, by the way, if she’d like some fried chicken and potatoes. I mention the gas station. She graciously declines. 

I call the next morning about O’Henry. The voice on the phone is Maddy again, who says O’Henry survived the night, and guess what?

My opossum carries seven to nine joeys in her pouch. She’s a mama! Opossums birth nearly two dozen babies the size of bees. They have 13 teats, and the babies that make it to the teats and latch on are the first round to survive. The teats expand and secure the joeys in place. 

***

Maddy and I take a walk through the sanctuary acreage a few days later. 

“We’re having trouble counting because she’s a ferocious mama and they’re little babies,” Maddy says.

She’s worked with animals for a decade. She corrects me — opossums have prehensile tails they use to balance themselves and wrap around tree branches, but they don’t hang from them. Opossums, though they look like they’ve just stuck a finger in an electrical outlet, are not related to other rodents and are quite laid back. This is probably because they have such few natural predators, Maddy says, though bobcats, dogs, coyotes, and raptors may go for them. Opossums have opposable thumbs and raccoons do not.

Opossums are not very territorial in the couple years they survive in the wild. I’ve read they rarely venture out further than a mile or so from where they were born. They feed opportunistically, including on carrion, eggs, fruit, snakes, grass. I say O’Henry is welcome to come back to our swamp when she’s recovered. We have room for 10 more opossums, I’m sure. 

Maddy describes how O’Henry opens her mouth like an alligator when she notices sanctuary staff watching her. She’ll try to bite anyone who puts hands on her to open her pouch. 

“(Her pouch) is right where, if they stood up like we do, it would be kind of where our belly button is,” Maddy says. O’Henry’s pouch opens like a seam into a cave, not like a pants pocket. The joeys, constantly on O’Henry’s teats inside the pouch, excrete around themselves into the warm, moist environment. She licks everyone clean daily, when she can. While she’s injured, staff use warm water and a rag. Joeys can dehydrate. 

“It’s a little icky. It gets a little stinky in there,” Maddy says, though opossums, when healthy, are pretty clean creatures. Their body temperatures rest around 94 to 97 degrees, which may be why they are nearly immune to rabies. 

We finish our walk and Maddy hands me over to Amberly Gaspard, a 21-year-old staffer who’s worked with opossums for more than three years. Amberly loves them, calls them precious and dopey, and tells me about the balance of phosphorus and calcium they need to avoid a metabolic bone disease — developing a brittle and misshapen skeleton as their bodies siphon calcium from their bones. This is why people adopting opossums off the streets is a terrible idea, she says, since people assume the omnivores can just vacuum up any meal. Human goodwill is one of opossums’ natural predators. 

“The opossums are definitely my favorite. They’re just so pitiful and so precious,” Amberly says. 

***

I call back every few days to check on O’Henry. She’s still at the sanctuary and will be until her joeys are grown and able to survive without her in about two and a half months. She’s eating apple sauce, is on pain meds and antibiotics, and is retaining  fluids. Sanctuary staff will help O’Henry teach the joeys to forage. 

The day I drop O’Henry off, I return home with the empty cat carrier, the bag of chicken, and an apology to the vultures. My dad greets me at the fence. He asks about the bag of chicken. I mention the gas station. 

“Oh, you’re not going to eat them?” he says. 

I hand him the bag. 

We may have more in common with opossums than we think. 

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