Friday Links

Yesterday I saved a life. In a heroic display of chicken-shit bravery, I called James home at lunchtime to help me rescue a baby possum that had fallen down our basement stairwell in the back of our house. It was separated from its mother by an 8 foot drop and was much too tiny to climb out using the stairs. And without going into detail about the way we built our deck – there was pretty much no way for the Mom to rescue the little guy or for him to get back to the den. So my choices were to (a) heartlessly let Mother Nature do her thing and deal with a tiny dead possum and months of bad dreams or (b) figure out how to Ranger Rick that sucker.

I went to the Google machine (after a call to my Mom, who has lots of experience with nature and not being a mamsy-pamsy) and found a site that listed Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilition in my area. To my surprise, there are about 100 folks who are licensed rescuers in our area (with hilarious distinctions like “will take turtles” – are turtles the problem child of backyard wildlife?). I found a nice lady who advised me to scoop the guy up with a shovel and put it in a shoebox with one of the following snacks that possums prefer: applesauce, cottage cheese, bananas or scrambled egg. Scrambled. Egg. Hell no. She assured me that possums don’t carry disease and that neither the baby nor the mommy were going to hurt me. Ok, ok.

It took two adults with college degrees to wrangle the little drunksy into the shovel/shoebox scenario and get it in position for the handoff. In my frenzy to complete the mission, I didn’t take any pics. Blogger fail. Turns out, he was super cute too. Thankfully, lots of other folks agree and have taken pics of baby possums, including blogger Kaylah of the Dainty Squid (her shots below). I propped the box next to the opening under our deck and watched through the boards as he wobbled over to Mama with his scraped nose and the pair were blissfully reunited. So, I’m still up 5 possums in my yard. Is that a victory, or…?

Anyway, without further rambling – here are this week’s links:

• Nature quiz! 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Opossums
• The Polar Bears of architecture – with two of my hometowns on the list! Boo to that, and please get your ish together.
• On a related note, The Village of Irvington, where I graduated high school, is now on the National Registry of Historic Places, thanks to my dad, Andy Lyons, and many others in the village. Local artist August Wren made this super cute illustrated map of town that’s being sold as posters and tote bags at the Historical Society. I’m proud of my Dad, and The Village, for not ending up like one of the endangered spots mentioned above.
• SF Girl By Bay’s column on Maia McDonald felt like I was having my fortune told.
• The cactus is still having its moment. And I like it.
• Iced coffee, iced coffee, iced coffee, iced coffee.
• Hot Dog of the Week?!?! Somebody has their priorities straight.

Loveyoubye! Mags