Call it Opossum or Possum – it’s Not Coming When you Call

The dog wouldn’t fetch.

So, I pulled the Sunday newspaper from our rural mailbox. I lugged it to my father, who read the comics to me. The funny pages were a wonderland of color and wit. My father added voices that brought “Dennis the Menace,” “Marmaduke,” “Peanuts,” “Beetle Bailey,” “Mark Trail” and “Dick Tracy” to life. I enjoyed “Pogo” and “Li’l Abner,” but I didn’t always understand them. I laughed at the Dagwood sandwich in “Blondie,” which was a towering, multi-layered sandwich made with a variety of meats, cheeses and condiments named after Dagwood Bumstead, a central character in the comic strip. I knew Dad had finished when he said, “I’ll see you in the funny papers.” That was another way of saying, “See you later.”

I saw an opossum in the yard. Pink ears and tip of tail showed frostbite. Pogo (creator Walt Kelly) said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The local opossum might consider winter an antagonist.

My wife gave me some Pogo figurines — the irascible and egotistical Albert Alligator, Churchy LaFemme, a turtle by trade, and Beauregard Bugleboy, a hound dog of undetermined breed. They brought memories of other characters of the strip. Howland Owl, Porky Pine, Miz Ma’m’selle Hepzibah (a beautiful skunk), Deacon Mushrat, Barnstable Bear, Mister Miggle (a stork or crane), Bun Rab, Rackety Coon Chile, Grundoon (a groundhog) and three identical bats named Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred, differentiated by their pants — striped, checkered or plaid. One bat said, “Whichever pair of trousers you puts on in the morning, that’s who you are for that particular day.”

Aunt Ingeborg looked forward to an opossum’s nightly visit to a pet’s bowl on the front steps of her house. She thought it was cute. 

This dialogue comes from the TV show called “The Beverly Hillbillies” Jed: Would you folks like to stay for dinner?

Mr. Drysdale (a banker): You’re not having possum innards, are you?

Jed: Naw, we had possum innards last night…

Mr. Drysdale: Then we’ll stay!

Jed: Tonight, we’s havin’ leftovers. That’s the thing about possum innards, they’s just as good the second day.

Daisy Moses, called Granny, described her special Christmas dish on that show: red cabbage and green turnip tops swimming with sorghum, and heavenly hash, which is grits and chitlins, possum belly, hog jowls and catfish, all minced together and simmered in gopher gravy, topped with poached hawk eggs.

Jed added: “Mmm-mmm, now there’s vittles you won’t forget in a hurry.”

The character named John Brewster responded, “I’ll try.”

 Native Americans called the mammal “aposoum,” or “apasum,” depending on dialect, meaning white face or white beast. A dentist’s delight, the opossum has 50 teeth, more than any other North American mammal, to accommodate an omnivorous diet. It has five pink toes on each padded foot. One toe on each hindfoot is “opposable,” resembling a thumb. Surprisingly, a possum (or an opossum) isn’t the philosophical darling of the Okefenokee Swamp like Pogo.

Cars regularly hit opossums while they’re munching on roadkill. A shortage of critical thinking skills earns the marsupials a bonkus of the konkus. Remember what Pogo said? Because of their eyesight, car lights in the distance are mere blurs to possums. Hitting a possum and having a successful rain dance both depend on timing — one bad, one good. When a possum is cornered, it bluffs by hissing, growling and displaying teeth. If that doesn’t work, it keels over with its body gone limp, eyes staring, mouth gaping and limbs stiffening as in rigor mortis. Playing possum doesn’t work on Buicks. 

Possum hunts rival coon hunts for good old boy stories in the South, and possum recipes can be closely guarded secrets. Euell Gibbons, who said this about Grape Nuts, “Its naturally sweet taste reminds me of wild hickory nuts,” touted a possum recipe featuring Jerusalem artichokes and hickory nuts. There is the Possum Growers and Breeders Association of America, which at its zenith in the 1970s had 40,000 members, including Richard Nixon. They issued “Eat More Possum” bumper stickers.

My Grandma made hotdishes to feed a large family. An older cousin suspected they contained roadkill, but I’ve never eaten opossum on purpose.

That fact causes me to grin like a possum.