Humor – Page 10 – For the Love of

Its funny how some things just disappear and then all of a sudden ‘surprise, I am back’. It can be a person or a thing but in my case it was a cardboard box.

Jansenphoto’s Tuesday’s photo challenge is Surprise! We all love good surprises and wish we didn’t get some surprises but sometimes there is a weird off handed surprise that make us smile.

To cut to the chase, I had my mailbox sitting on a cardboard box so that the mailman would not have to come up to the house. I will tell that story one day but today we are talking about the box. Saturday was a beautiful day but we had some pretty serious wind gusts around 45-55 mph. It was more than the little box could stand I guess as the mailbox ended up on the ground and the box was not to be found. I asked around but no one had seen it. Didn’t want to trash up my neighbors yard. OK, no big deal. I placed a concrete block there and put the mailbox on it. Wind wont blow that away…unless it takes the house as well.

Tuesday mid-morning when I went to check on the mail, guess what was there.

IMG_20181023_102607 — And the box returns, Who Knew?

They even brought it back filled with trash. How extra special. I put it with the rest of the trash I was cleaning up from the yard so it is no more for certain this time.

And as always as a reminder to myself as well as others, remember to be kind. It will bring a smile to you and as well as those you were kind to.

kind8

An Ode is a lyrical poem meant to be sung. Why would you do that for a opossum. It such an unattractive creature especially when it opens its mouth.

Coming from the south there have always been jokes, poetry, stories and even odes to opossums. There is even a country star, George Jones, that had a nick name of opossum. Maybe because he wrote a song about a opossum. And in checking there are numerous odes to opossums on the internet. Again I ask why?

According to research, opossums are marsupials from the order Didelphimorphia endemic to the Americas and the largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere. Shockingly there are over 103 species in 19 genre. Hmm, who’d a thunk?

oppossum

What prompt my interest in this was one that had been run over in front of my house yesterday as I was heading to church. It reminded me of a conversation with a small child, not mine, but because this child had only seen opossum when hit on the road, he thought that was where they came from and what their purpose was. It was a chuckling conversation.

But the most chuckling remembrance concerning opossums was from Baby Ruth, my Opossum Queen.

IMG_20180825_094559 — Baby Ruth In Va. snow

Baby Ruth was a Black Lab cross that had a thing against opossums. She would go into attack mode the moment a opossum scent cross her nose. I wrote a story and submitted it for publication about her and this obsession and I will attach it here sometime if publication gets declined, its rather a funny story. As you know, opossum are notorious for playing dead in appearance and emitting the smell of death at the same time.

palydead — Don’t let appearances fool you

Baby Ruth would capture them, shake them violently, thinking they were dead and then she would prance around all proud like she had saved the world. Thirty minutes later the opossum would be gone but the crown on Baby Ruth would still be intact. All great memories.

When my nephew was young he found a baby one that had been abandoned or lost and raised it until it was able to fend for itself. They are quite cut as babies but then all babies are cute, especially animal babies, so many varieties. They even seem to smile.