How she even got in the yard being as sick as she was I don't know. We have a six-foot privacy fence around the whole yard and usually the opossums and raccoons have to climb the fence to get in. But in she came. Bill spotted her lying on the ground by the clothesline just as he was going off for work at 11:30. He said she hadn't been there at breakfast. I asked him to go out and get a closer look. He did and he came back in and said, "She's still breathing."

He went off to work. Donning some heavy gloves so I could nudge her to assess just how sick she was, I went out to have a look at her. Cautiously, I approached and she didn't move. Her eyes were wide open so she saw me coming. But she didn't move except from some little tremors in her feet that were either from her sickness or from being too cold in her weakened condition. Her back leg was sticking up in the air like it was paralyzed. I got closer to her and she didn't, couldn't, make an attempt to move. I patted her head and she still didn't move. Didn't even hiss. So, I decided to try to check for any signs of bleeding anywhere. There wasn't any but in the middle of her belly there was what looked like a wound and some visible intestines. Oh, my, I thought and looked further. Then it dawned on me that they were babies and the wound was her pouch. My heart sank. It was bad enough to have a sick animal but then to have babies dependent on her was bad.

That sent me straight to my computer to look up the nearest wildlife rehabilitation center. No one answered so I left a message. Feeling like that wasn't enough and figuring that no one would get back to me till after 5:00 that night, I looked up some more phone numbers and called a wildlife center in Columbus. She was very helpful and gave me half a dozen other numbers to call including the wildlife officer for the county but she said my best bet was to get in contact with Second Chance Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in my area. The place that I had already called and left a message with.

While I was talking with her, I kept looking out the window to see how Momma Possum was doing. The poor thing kept trying to get up. She'd right herself after pawing at the air and trying to grab purchase on anything she could, wobble around a few steps and then fall back down on the ground. Following this routine, she managed to make it over to the gazebo and then I lost sight of her so I hurried the woman off the phone, ran downstairs as fast as a woman with arthritic knees can go, grabbed a cat carrier, pulled the gloves on again hurriedly, and headed outside to see if I could catch a possum. I figure it would be pretty easy since she was so severely incapacitated.

Somehow she had made it all the way over to the gate by the garage and there looking at her was the neighborhood fluffy cat that is a regular in our yard. Momma Possum was in her usual belly up position and defenseless. When the cat, who I've dubbed Murky, saw me, he gave me a wide-eyed stare and then ran to the fence and scrambled over. With no problem at all, I gently lifted and pushed the possum into the cat cage. She turned heavily around and gave one tiny almost inaudible hiss at me and then laid right down. I brought her into the house to sit the cage on the filing cabinet by the window where all the sun was shining in.

Then I made some more phone calls and came up with nothing else. All I could do was sit back and wait until I got a phone call back from Second Chance. I sat here with her for awhile but finally went to the kitchen at 3:00 to make a sandwich since I hadn't had lunch yet. Came back to the computer room after I had eaten to see how Momma Possum was doing and she wasn't doing well at all. She had died while I was gone. At first, I thought there was breathing but it must have been the babies bumping against her. I waited a bit to be sure that she was really dead, then opened the cage door and touched her. Her feet were already cooling down. Then there was the unmistakable wetness in the bottom of the cage from her bladder emptying. I felt so sad for her. Not knowing what else to do, I took the cage out to the breezeway and then came back to wait by the phone.

It wasn't until 6:45 that I was able to finally talk with someone at Second Chance. The guy there gave me the phone number of a woman in the area who would be able to take the babies. In the meantime, he said to get those babies out of the mother, put them in a dry cloth, and put them on a heating pad. And that's what I did. The inside of an opossum's pouch feels wet and fleshy. The babies had a hold on the teats like they had been soldered onto them. Gently, I grasped their jaws and pulled them free. I came up with six live ones and one dead one. Their mother's body had been cooling down and they were cooling too. If only I had known earlier to get them out, I sure would have. I held them in my hand for awhile trying to help get them warmed up. The six live ones were very lively and wiggly. They kept rooting around trying to find the milk jugs again and when I held them up to my ear I heard energetic sucking noises coming from them.

Then I called Barbara, the rehab lady, at the phone number Second Chance had given me. No answer. Left a message. I put the babies on a washcloth on a heating pad, covered them, and waited. But I didn't wait long. Twenty minutes later, I called again. Barbara had just gotten home. I explained what had happened and she quickly gave me directions to get to her house out in the country. Bill and I piled into the car and were on our way. I was so intent on getting the babies to someone who could care for them properly that I completely forgot to take any picture of them. They all fit in my hand, they were so tiny. They were about 1 1/2 inches long, pink, hairless, eyes closed, and embyronic-looking having perfectly formed little fingers and tails.

Barbara turned out to be a hoot. Completely Type A personality, a ball of fire I'd say. But such a caring person who loves rescuing animals. She talked a mile a minute. Barbara thinks the mother may have had distemper. It's hard to say for sure. We stood in her laundry room where she keeps the wild babies on top of a heating pad and talked for awhile. Then she took us out and showed us her pen of Canada geese and domestic ducks that she's rehabbing. And in another pen there was a magnificent pheasant that had a broken leg. Somewhere there in the conversation, I joined her team of rehabbers and will be getting a call from her to help raise baby birds and mammals. Something I'm excitedly looking forward to doing.

Was it karma that brought Momma Possum to my yard to die so I'd meet up with someone who could help me get into doing something I've always wanted to do? I dunno. I'd like to think so. But I'd much rather like to think about the mother possum not getting sick and going on with her life raising her seven little ones like they should have been raised. But, this is not a perfect world.