One morning, I was just kind of hanging out with nothing to do, and when I got a call from my father to give him a ride, I knew there would be potential for adventure... "Hey. Can you come give me a lift?" "Where to?" "I need to meet Courtney Cox." "Didn't know you were a fan of 'Friends'. Do you even own a TV?" "No. What are you talking about?" "What are YOU talking about?" "I gotta go see this Possum Lady." "Is this... like some kind of freak show thing, or are you asking me to take you to a strip club? Don't be one of those morning strip club guys." "Animal rescue. I got this baby possum I need to take to her." "Alright. Give me twenty minutes. Wait... People rescue opossums?" I got to his house shortly thereafter and found my father fawning over the contents of a tattered cardboard box, as though there were an infant inside. A work lamp was clamped to one side of the box. I approached to find a tiny opossum curled up with an old sock. It was wet... and evil-looking, despite its diminutive size. There's just nothing cute about these animals, unlike perhaps the possums found in Australia. This creature looked like a damp hellbeast... something wicked that the Goblin King would send out on nefarious missions while he spends a long day dancing in the street with Mick Jagger. "Do I need to ask?" "It fell into a rain barrel with its mother and another baby. They drowned. I fished him out in time." "Didn't you put screens over the barrels?" "Must've fallen from pretty high up during the storm. Went right through. He don't seem to like the bright light, being nocturnal and all, but he likes it better than the blow dryer." The image of this blow-dried marsupial, fluffy with a full-body opossum afro, popped into my head. "He's probably worried about split ends. Who's Courtney Cox?" "She's the Possum Lady." "Right..." "Her office is right down the street. I called her and said we'd bring him by." We hopped into my car with the creature and my father directed me toward Battleground Avenue, and then to the parking lot of a small law firm. I followed my father as he carried the box - large enough to hold a Bassett hound but currently occupied by a quarter-pound hellbeast and a sock - up the steps and into the waiting room of the attorney's office. I in my hoodie and he in his muddy boots, ripped jeans and a plaid flannel shirt that was likely older than I - to say nothing of the huge, tattered box - we stood in the doorway for several seconds as the receptionist stared in utter confoundment, until finally my father spoke. "I got a possum." "Ohhhh... You must be looking for Courtney," she exclaimed as she reached for the phone and then called the Possum Lady to come to the waiting room. My relief was palpable. Courtney emerged from the back and took a peek at the hellbeast, and then took the box and placed it on the receptionist's desk. Moments later, we all were gathered around the hellbeast's makeshift crib like a scene from "Rosemary's Baby", joined by at least two other women from the office. The ladies were all "ooh" and "aww" while its black, empty eyes seemed to pierce my soul and its mouth revealed the tips of its sharp needle teeth. The receptionist told the tale of an elderly woman who'd recently called to say that she'd rescued a baby like this. "I was giving it a bath because it was filthy," the woman had said. "Well, when do you think you'll bring it in?" "Thing is, it got right nasty towards me and tried to bite me, so I turned on just the hot water and it's dead." "So, you're calling us to say... that you had rescued a possum... and then scalded and drowned it?" We left the hellbeast and sock with Courtney Cox. I still think of it each time one of its hideous brethren walks in front of my car at night and my headlights reveal its ghastly physiognomy and soul-piercing black pits staring back at me. read more