February saw winter come to Arkansas and much of the country with a vengeance. Locally, the temperatures plunged into sub-zero territory for the first time in a decade and night wind chill reached -20 one night. Believe me, we are not prepared for that kind of weather. Our house and our daughter’s family were fine, but there were a lot of frozen pipes and power outages for several days. My back yard bird feeders were kept busy as you have seen from previous posts, but one evening we had a new visitor to the neighborhood.
One evening I looked out the back window and saw this critter on the neighbors fence. From a distance, he kind of looked like a cat. As soon as I figured out it was a possum, I grabbed my camera and headed out the door. “Opie” let me get very close to him for the portrait shoot. He watched my every move, but made no attempt to escape and there was no hissing involved. I captured the images posted there and went back in the house. A short time later Opie was gone and I haven’t seen him since.
As you can see, Opie is colored more like a raccoon or cat than what you normally think of a possum. He was really very cooperative and I think I actually got a little smile out of him.
Monday’s Music Moves Me
This week our conductor is XMas Dolly, Marrie. The theme is to build a playlist of Johnny Mathis songs. Johnny Mathis was a favorite of my mother. Mom liked Dean Martin, Perry Como, and Andy Williams as well, but she was not a fan of Frank Sinatra nor Tony Bennett. So on with the Johnny Mathis picks. First up is a song that became the signature song of The Carpenters. Yes, “Close To You” was the title cut of a1970 album which is the same year The Carpenters had a mega hit with the same song.
