Opossum playing dead – Photo: L. Weikel
Opossom’s Appearance
Every once in a while we’ve had an opossum show up in our yard. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about a time when Spartacus barreled out our kitchen door and ran right over one, causing it to roll toward a car parked in the driveway. It was amusing at the time – mostly because both animals seemed so surprised (and neither got hurt).
Recently, however, there’s been an opossum hanging out underneath our bird feeders under the cover of darkness. I described for you last night our most recent up-close-and-personal encounter with it, when we surprised the critter by returning home from a walk in the dark.
Old News
As I described in my post the other night, our opossum truly is a first class thespian. Upon encountering it, both Karl and I were absolutely convinced was dead. It was sprawled on its side, its mouth open, exposing its glinting sharp teeth. To add to its master play, its tongue was hanging out. Although I didn’t detect an odor, Spartacus was clearly sniffing at something weird in the air.
The two photos in this post are what I managed to take in a single shot, because it was so deftly scurried to safety after taking me by surprise by sitting up and pointedly (no pun intended) looking at me.
But What’s the Message?
The night that all of this took place, when we unexpectedly (to the opossum) returned from a walk and surprised it, I had to write about the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the night sky.
When I then attempted to write about our opossum encounter last night, I became exceedingly frustrated by the fact that all of a sudden my laptop was telling me I was maxing out on my memory. Apparently it was hitting the wall. Apparently the hard drive becoming full was reaching such an apex that, as Apples are wont to do, when I tried to even just log into the computer or open a document, all I saw was a swirling rainbow circle spinning minute after minute. Literally. I was unable to do anything on my MacBook Air.
I had to laugh at my internal reaction. It upset me! I’d been faithfully writing my posts on this laptop since around the eighth day into this 1111 Devotion. That meant I’d written 371 consecutive posts on this laptop, and I did not want to change my routine. (Wow.)
Suddenly, it occurred to me that this was somehow a reflection of the lesson Opossum was here to teach me: STRATEGY.
Too Much Stuff
I’ve most definitely been feeling a need to sort and discard. My environment is begging me for attention. And there it was: right in my face.
I could not upload the photo of my prehistoric little friend because I had too much stuff on my laptop. So… I needed to employ some strategy. OK, I thought, I am not going to let this throw me off track. I’ll use my Dell for the blog – just this once.
Thwarted
That, too, became a task fraught with obstacles. First of all, I downloaded the two photos I’d made from the single ‘live’ photo I’d taken with my iPhone. Oh, let me tell you, I was so proud of myself for having figured out how to isolate the frames and keep the two most distinct as separate photos.
Imagine my supreme irritation, then, when I tried to download this onto my Dell – and could not, for the life of me, find the folder in which the photos were being stored. I know; I know. Sounds simple. Probably is simple. But I simply could not figure it out last night.
Then – oh my. A message popped up on my Dell. I could not believe my eyes when I realized it was telling me I had precious little hard drive space left on it, too.
Opossum ‘waking up’ – Photo: L. Weikel
A Consistent Message
I have to admit, it’s time for me to clean out the clutter. Be it in my bureau drawers or in my creative outlets (my laptops), clearly too much ‘stuff’ is muddying up the flow. I need to create a strategy to help myself.
And the consistency is holding with the messenger as well. Not only did I see it the night it seemingly fainted dead away. I also saw it both last night and tonight!
Frankly, I’m astonished by this. When we got home from our walk this evening, for instance, Cletus was sitting on the porch just watching the Opossum eating stuff it was finding under the bird feeder. And the dogs…they seem to smell it, but also don’t seem to care much about it anymore. It’s sort of become ‘one of the gang.’ (I do need to say that we try to be very careful when letting the dogs out for their final evening tinkle. I’ve walked onto the porch and told it to go home three straight nights now!)
For now, though, I’m happy to report that I removed a bunch of redundant photos from my MacAir and it seems to at least not be getting stuck on the whirling rainbow any more. Phew. I still need a strategy to cull the herd here in the house, though.
Wish me luck!
(T-731)