From the Tater Bed!

Marc Velazquez sent the following yesterday and I thought it was a pretty good idea:

As an addition to the Thursday Three, perhaps a Friday Follow-up would be appropriate for Christmas and help generate more comments (as if you need help with that!). My proposal, forthwith:

If Scrooge's Ghost of Christmas Past were to pay you a visit one night, where would you want her to take you?

I'd also like to take this chance to wish you and the rest of the Possum family* a very merry Christmas and a prosperous 2005, the Year of the Blogger.

Your blog buddy,

Marc

*What's a group of possums called: pod, kit, litter, bunch?

Hmmm--for the first question, I'm not sure. I know in Dickens' book, the GOCP wasn't a good looking woman in flimsy clothes, so that kinda cuts down on the options, I suppose. If I could go back and visit one Christmas, I might like to go back to the one the year before my dad died. That would have been 1983, and try as I might, I really can't remember any of the details of it, although I do remember him driving back down to Auburn with me to check on my trailer. We had a cold snap, and at the time the potable water pump was still plumbed into the main system from the outdoor tap. I had left the furnace off, and when the temp got down below freezing, the water inside the little plastic pump froze, expanded, and burst the pump housing. When the temp warmed up a bit, it leaked out and spread all over the floor. When we got back down there to check on it, the water on the floor had refrozen into one giant sheet of ice. But, still, I don't remember what the actual exchange of gifts and such was like.

AS for the second part of Marc's inquiry, as I noted to him, a group of baby possums would be a litter. Possums are solitary as adults, though, and do not congregate except to procreate.

If they did run in packs, however, I think the proper term would be 'a gross.' As in, "Eww, look! A gross of possums!" This site says they would be a "passel," which I suppose has some alliterative appeal.

Also, did you know that boy possums are jacks, girls are jills, and babies are joeys? That's what I hear, anyway.
posted by Terry at 8:40:00 AM