When I first spied the beast waddling through our backyard trees, I grimaced. Zooming in my phone’s camera, I grabbed a shot, catching the subject’s white face and brindle body. Weekly on our property, we witnessed turkeys, ducks, deer, and squirrels—even a hawk once—but this was a new one.
I texted the picture to Husband. Ew, look what’s in our yard!
He responded inside of a minute. He’s good for bugs and maybe mice, I think. We shall call him Farnsworth.
My man texted me a screenshot of a source extolling the creature’s virtues: “Opossums are scavengers. They move from place to place in search of good food sources and a comfy place to sleep and are beneficial for helping to control the overpopulation of snakes, rodents, and insects. Opossums act like little vacuum cleaners when it comes to ticks, including those that spread Lyme disease.”
Oh, I take back my ew, I texted.
They’re the janitors of the backyard. Maybe security guards against the rodent riffraff? Husband wrote.
My initial reaction was turned on its head. Obviously, we needed more Farnsworths.
Five days later, while the girls basked outside, offering up winter skin as a gift to the sun, Dicka alerted me by text of a new mammal at large in the yard. I hurried outdoors to witness him, but the masked one had vanished.
“Raccoons are the worst,” I said.
“He disappeared under that pile of wood,” she said.
“Just great.”
Did raccoons have any skills and talents to share with our family? They were scavengers too, but these guys were willing to polish off carcasses and sift through trash. “Urban survivors,” National Geographic called them. Gross.
The new critter emerged—like he knew we were talking about him—and clawed up a spot in the grass with tremendous speed, flicking dirt behind him.
“Jarvis!” Dicka hollered. So, this one already had a name too. He halted his excavation and lasered his gaze at her. “Stop it!” And for a moment, he did.
Days later, Farnsworth flashed his Sasquatch-like presence again, and I imagined him performing his vacuumly duties in our trees. I smiled. We learned his yard mate, Jarvis, however, had helped himself the previous night to a garbage bag someone had left outside our bin. I scowled.
I typed a partial question into the search bar, and Google filled in the rest: “Do raccoons and opossums get along?” A common question, it seemed. The best online answer was they had to be good at sharing since they enjoyed the same scrounging habits. Sometimes, though, they could snap and swipe at each other.
I sighed. It might be a very long summer.
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*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.