It was the Fourth of July and I had to take care of a few things
so I could go on a big trip to California.
First on the list was to retrieve two wire cages I had used to protect the
peach trees from deer. This year the
deer had knocked the cages over, stolen the peaches, and almost destroyed the
trees.
As I turned the truck around and backed into the yard, a saw
another problem to solve. A possum had
crawled into the compost bin to feed on my kitchen scraps and now he was
stuck. He was hanging down, suspended,
some part of his body caught in between the two panels of the bin. He looked up at me as I got out of the
truck. “Great! Now I have to try to save you.”
I walked over to take a look and thought he had his foot
caught. I went in the house for a pair
of gloves – just in case, texted my cousins asking for help, and then gathered
tools. I thought that I might be able to
pop the bin apart and free him. After several attempts with varying sizes of
pry bars, I discovered that I couldn’t pull it apart, and that his weight on
the bin was a problem.
I went into the shed for boards and a container the height
of his stuck appendage. I pushed the container as close to him as I could and
then used a board to ease him up, sliding the container closer until he was
resting on top. I then saw what was
caught. It was not his foot, but instead
his testicles. At this point he was
baring his teeth and drooling. I talked
calmly letting him know I meant him no harm.
I then went back to trying to pry the bin apart, but I just wasn’t
strong enough.
He was resting on boards and a container that allowed him to
lay down rather than hang. I decided I
needed to walk away for a bit to think about what I could do. I went to do another job.
Thoughts about the situation would not go away. He looked to
me like he would soon be laying down to die. Without freedom, he would die
slowly and sadly. I didn’t want him to suffer and I wondered
what I needed to do. The flies were
already starting to swarm around him. Should
I put him out of his misery? I couldn’t
imagine how I would do that. Maybe I could
perform an amputation. But how would I
stop the bleeding?
My thoughts were interrupted by a phone call. My cousins were there. By the time, I got back to the house, the
possum was free. Bill had put on gloves
and held the critter up, patting him, and talking softly to calm him. Jeanne put muscle behind a crowbar and Bill lifted
him out. He carried him into the woods
and set him on the ground. The possum
was dazed, but in a minute sauntered off into the woods.
When I got home, I used tape to cover all the cracks in the
bin so no one else would get stuck. The
dharma for me in this was thinking about what part of the experience was the
coiled rope and not the snake! All in a
day’s work on the farm. 
