Things Are Not Always What they Appear To Be
Colt was three years old in the fall of 2016. One evening he was in the middle of an intense game of The Floor is Lava. He was in the finals and was getting ready to make the leap from the recliner directly onto Annette and my last nerve. It was time for him to burn off some energy and to give Annette a bit of a break. Since it was dusk I took him with me to shut the chickens up in their coop.
After checking out every blade of grass, every leaf on a tree, and every grain of dirt in our path we made it over to the chickens. I was emptying out food scraps into the chicken pen while Colt was still checking everything out around the pen. He walked around the corner of the pen but I could still see him through the fence in the beam of my flashlight, but my view was a little obstructed. I heard him say, “Hello kitty.” I looked up and could see just the small portion of the animal he was talking to and I could see it had gray fur.
I didn’t give it a second thought because I though he was talking to our cat of the same color. While I had that thought, the gray cat in question just rubbed up against my leg. It was at that moment I really started to ask, “If you are here, then who is over there?” Our cat is really good natured, which is great since Colt is not the most gentle of handlers. Since I was not sure who’s cat Colt is petting I was not sure if it was going to claw him when he tried to pick it up in his not so delicate manner.
I ran over there as quick as I could, by this time Colt was squatting directly over it and still talking to it. My flashlight finally revealed the identity of our mystery guest. It was not even close to a cat. Colt’s new best friend was a possum! I pulled Colt away from this dangerous wild beast, putting myself between the two, and willing to fight this thing to the death to protect my son.
Did I mention the possum was in a fetal position, drooling on itself because it was so scared? It was reaching into its bag of survival tricks and it was, you guessed it, playing possum, which is a defensive reflex that I never understood.
“Colt, that is not a cat! That is a possum! Possums are very dangerous!” A little side note, that was a total lie on my part. I have never known anyone that has been attacked, threatened, chased, cornered, or even looked at harshly by a possum. If anyone has died from a possum attack, then possums are also very good at covering their tracks and finding an alibi. However I am a Dad trying to get my point across to him that everything with fur is not a cat that should be petted. “Did you touch the possum?” I really don’t know why I ask questions that I already know the answer to, but yet I can’t stop myself.
With the proudest look on his face,”Yessss.” That is not the answer I was looking for. We left the possum there so it could regain its composure and shuffle off into the night and find someone else to pet it. I took Colt to the garage and had him wash his hands with some Go Jo hand cleaner. I believe its big selling point is that it has some anti-possum cleaning properties. The whole time he repeated the phrase, “Possums are very dangerous.” I knew that would be the first thing he would say when we came back in the house and I was right. It was up to me to explain that while under my watch I let our son pet a possum, but it was totally not my fault.
P.S.
To show you how much kids really remember about what you tell them. Months later when we explain to him that he needs to be careful because something is dangerous, he will say, “Like possums. Possums are very dangerous.”
“Yes, son. Just like possums.”
