I thought you were supposed to play dead!

There are a few suburban opposums around, but I have yet to capture one digitally. I saw one last night, but it was not obliging for photography, instead, looked at me with reflective eyes in the night and slowly walked away. I have never really seen one run, only lumber and walk with an alligator-like gait; swagger with hips in action or somewhat gracefully like a chameleon trying to imitate wind on leaves, feigning non-existence.

I'll be good and thankful when I can catch up to one and it fall over, stinking dead -- their skin exuding mucous smelling of rot, cleverly disuading predators from consuming them. Yes ... I'll take one faking death, but real dead ones, stink really foul. I know, last year I helped a neighbor move one with a bloated stomch that we both feared would rupture and explode a mixture of gasses and smells that would make your own fecal matter more appetizing.

Alas, should I ever want photos of the dead, I could drive to a local county park fixed on a growing-heavier traffic road, lined on either side with the dead that didn't make it to the other side, alive. I understand that one naturalist who works at the park, actually uses the dead fauna for count and species to know what kind of critters and some (extrapolated) population densities of species. There are few dead deer on that strip, but several raccoons die every week. They must have a healthy population to sustain such population losses.