Meeting a possum

When I was teaching in a one room school--Pleasant Valley #4--I had a class of 14 pupils. One day we were discussing animals and the kids talked about possums. Now where I grew up we only had dogs and cats. I made the statement I had never seen one. Firman, one of my sixth graders, decided to fix that. The next morning I arrived at school and there was a possum in front of the schoolhouse door. When Firman arrived at school I asked him to put it out by the fence. Not knowing much about possums I thought it was dead. However it got up and walked away. In Shawnee I live near a creek and I have deer and have even had a possum on the fence outside my bedroom window.