High Beams

I keep reminding myself how conduction works: the heat drawn from my warm hand gets sucked into the tiny cold body, but it's a dead, endless cold that keeps pulling and pulling and pulling.  It never gets warm.  I clasp him the whole way home in my bare hand, resting on a bunched up sweatshirt in my lap, steering with my left hand and only letting go of him to shift gears.  I'm crying.  In some irrational place in my mind, I think he'll start moving again if only I can get him warm, even though when I found him on the pavement, he was already freezing, surrounded by a sprinkling of siblings all across the highway.  Sometimes, one of my fingers accidentally twitches and his little nose hits my thumb.  My heart jumps hopefully every time.  He was the only one I could reach before a car threatened to turn me into the spitting image of his mother, guts spilling over the white line as I dragged her to the side of the road by her tail, prodding her open belly with a plastic bag, hoping for one still inside.  But, it looks as though when the car hit her, her womb exploded, and tiny bodies lay around her like flower petals on a lake.

It's springtime, and in the spirit of biodiversity, I urge you to use caution when driving at night as animals are moving about in order to mate and find shelter to bear their babies.  Below is a photo of the one baby I could get my hands on.  He didn't make it; nor did his siblings or his mother.  When you see a dead opossum on the side of the road, (if and ONLY IF it is SAFE for you to be on the road--be mindful of traffic and use common sense, especially at night) remember that it may be carrying babies in the pouch that could still be alive even though the mother is dead.  If you have the ability to retrieve them, put them in a box, keep them warm, do not feed or give them water.  Call a wildlife rehabilitation center or someone who can direct you to one.  Remember, these animals are not pets.  People do consider them to be a nuisance animal, but they are misunderstood.  (As a side note, I did NOT hit the opossum carrying these, but I did stop to see if I could help.)

Slow down: save a life!  Or several!