Richard's Poor Almanac by Richard Thompson for January 17, 2021

Transcript:

there's an opossum in my garage! well don't panic! opossums are beneficial in many ways! they'll happily devour any lice, fleas, nits, ticks, chiggers, slugs, grubs, etc. infesting most foreign anddomestic cars, leaving them showroom-new! guy: hey! did you know? opossums are the only marsupial native to north america! they even predate the dinosaurs! this makes them just insufferable. possum: we came over to america in 153 mil-lion b.c., unlike some mammals i could name. opossum fun fact - when cornered an opossum will play dead, or at least fake a spastic colon, so convincingly that even hardened critics are fooled! it sure looked dead to me! -60 second preview better than 'shear madness!' -variety possum: agh opossums in the arts - american author henry james was famous for his collection of stuffed opossums! of course, it was probably one of those things where somebody once gave him a stuffed opossum & he feigned enthusiasm just to be nice & then - boom - everybody's giving him stuffed opossums until he's heartily sick of the wretched things. james had accumulated over 300 stuffed opossums by 1916 when he died, ironically of a spastic colon. want to learn more about opossums? come on over to my garage, but watch your step, there are tent-worms all over the place. next week - collecting snowglobes with ernest hemingway.