by Peter Menkin

Created on: April 08, 2009

"The Opossum That Came To Visit" (A title)

Tilde was a girl opossum who lived under the back porch of the house at the end of the road then a left turn into the drive a walk of 100 feet to the steps that led to the front porch. She had been living there since summer began. Tilde was a pretty opossum to other opossums and had a keen sense of sight-for an opossum. That's what the cats that lived in the house said about her. They also said that she was one of the homeliest creatures they'd ever set sights on and in their conversations about Tilde, whom they liked to talk about since she was new, they never once questioned where she came from or where she might be going. For all intents and purposes Tilde was there and had set up housekeeping.

One thing this meant, since Tilde liked a little snack now and then, was she had nibbles available to her when the cats weren't around. At night Tilde left her cool spot under the porch, where she had a chair and a table and a small radio which got most of the local stations and went out through her front door at the side opening of the porch and right onto the roof of her house, (the people in the house called her roof their back porch), where she found a nice plate of nibbles that the cats had left. But Tilde wasn't always so lucky to find a full plate of nibbles.

The raccoons who lived around the house often came at night and in their noisy raccoon way made quick eating of the nibbles. Tilde, who was an opossum who liked things the way things should be, and that meant quiet and under her control, especially on the roof of her own house, considered the raccoons, fat things that they were, she often thought, a nuisance. She planned to put out a jar of peanut butter, leave it for them to eat during one of their greedy visits and relished the idea of their getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of their mouths. The idea of it brought an uproarious laugh to the whole area. But Tilde didn't care who heard her. She was willing to let it all hang out and it felt good. "That will teach those raccoons to fool with my plate of nibbles in the middle of the night," she thought to herself. She almost hugged herself with glee when she thought again about the peanut butter she was going to set out for them.

"What's the point of all this," Tilde thought to herself, after she considered putting out the peanut butter, while at the same time relishing the idea of two fat raccoons licking the roof of their respective mouths and wishing they had

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