Oppossum

I've always liked possums, mostly I think for their strangeness - they're the only marsupials around here - and their gentleness - they're the only conscientious objectors in the animal world I can think of. They don't bite, and won't attack you. All they do to defend themselves is to feign death.
Once I was up in the big field along the top of our hill with my dog, and I saw her stop suddenly and lean down into the grass, quickly and with great purpose. Before I could reach her, she had grabbed a possum by the neck and shook it hard. When I got to my dog I grabbed her by the neck and shook her hard. I made her drop the poor possum, whose neck had been broken. It lay curled and motionless where it had been thrown in the grass. I leaned down and put my open hand on its side, feeling its soft, furred, still warm body. It didn't move, though some dying reflex made the lips draw slightly back over the tiny child's teeth.
Furious, I scolded my dog for such wanton killing, but she only wagged her tail blithely. I took her back to the house for incarceration and then I went back, alone, to mourn the corpse. It was gone, of course.
Possums are, I think, one of the Seven Sleepers, but they're waking up early this year. Two weeks ago, I sat in the kitchen having breakfast and looked up to see a possum wallowing across the snow, from the forsythia bushes to back behind the garage where the compost heap is. He was unhurried, his small lumpy body trundling steadily along with a soft boneless gait. His eyes were ringed with dark, and his long hairless tail stood out against the snow.
Last night, leaving my study over the garage around nine, my dog stopped in the tiny vestibule between inner door and outer, where I keep the big bucket of bird seed. My dog had a sudden urgent desire to look inside it, so I did as well. We both leaned over it and there, curled up on top of the Best Songbird Assortment, was the possum.
I took my dog and put her behind the door to the study, and went back to observe. The possum was motionless, waiting. I gently tipped the bucket down, so he'd be able to get out, but he stayed where he was. I leaned over then and we stared for a long time at each other: that vivid, feral face.
His bright dark eyes were ringed with brown, and his small pointed snout was bare and pink, like a tiny pig's, and still covered with tiny seeds. His brownish-grey coat was soft and fluffy, like thistle-down. His tail was thick and pink and hairless, quite terrible, like a medical hose. I could see the tiny white teeth, but he wasn't snarling. He was entirely still, even his breathing was quiet. But he was wild; even in his quietness he was wild. Everything in him was waiting for the next thing I did.
What I did was watch. I wanted to memorise him there, curled around himself in that bucket like a muff, the thick pink curved tail, the tiny clawlike toes spread out over the birdseed.
For a long time we faced each other, and then I left him, taking the dog, turning out the light and opening the door so that he could leave. When I came back later, the tipped-over bucket was empty. The possum had gone back to wherever he lives, full of sunflower seeds.