One day, about a year ago, I went outside to exercise – which consisted of walking down the street for several miles – and I saw something quite grotesque. It was a dead opossum who had apparently been hit by a car. I thought to myself, well, that’s Mississippi for you. So I walked by it and never gave it a second thought – shame on me, I know.

Anyway, I came out the next day and the opossum was still lying there, dead as an ’80s rock star’s career, and I thought to myself, hey, that was there yesterday, but just kept walking as if it never had occurred. This was a cycle that repeated itself for a significant amount of time.

We all get caught up in the maelstrom of deadlines that we call life, and we forget about the minor things that we may see everyday, things such as our mailbox, street signs, dead animals on the road. These cards just seem to get lost in the shuffle sometimes. But after 10 months of seeing the same animal on the side of the road makes one stop in front of it and stare in wonderment, which is what I did.

I said to myself out loud, “How is this biologically possible? It looks the same now as it did when I first saw it.” Out of my curiosity, I gave it a nudge with my feet, and instantly the opossum opened his eyes and said, with a gruff voice, “Hey, bud, it’s a two-lane road! Ain’t you got enough room to walk without bumping into me?!” This thing was alive…and it could talk! Shocked, I stammered, “You can talk?”

“Well, yeah, I can talk…you obviously can’t!”

“But I thought you were dead…”

“I’m playing dead. You ain’t ever heard of a ‘possum play dead?”

By this time, I had somewhat recomposed myself (as much as I could), and nodded my head. After all, I had heard of this saying. I then proceeded by asking him, “Why would you want to do that?” He stared at me for a moment, and then said, “It’s like this, I owe Vinnie the Racoon three oak tree leaves and fourteen acorns, and as long as I play dead, Vinnie will think I’m dead. Capiche?!”

“But that doesn’t seem like much. There’s plenty of oak trees around here.”

“That’s true, but Vinnie owns every tree within a ten mile radius of here, and I don’t travel fast, you understand?”

“Maybe I could help you out in some way…I could get you some acorns!”

“It’s no use now; Vinnie ain’t exactly the forgiving type. Naw, the best thing you could is just move on like nothin’ happened. Go ahead and do your silly, little exercise. Do that and we’ll get along real fine? Now, don’t bother talking to me again, I won’t get up.” After saying that, the opossum went right back to his rigor mortis pose.

In the days, that followed, the opossum was still there. I nudged him once or twice, but he stayed true to his word; he didn’t awaken. Eventually, I did the best thing I could do in a situation like this: I used him as a landmark. Whenever people needed directions to my house, I’d say, “Take a left on Hwy. 43, and after a quarter-mile, you’ll see this dead opossum on the side of the road; my house is the second on the right after that.”