I knew that possums had a fair sense of smell, but holy cow, I had no idea just how good it is.

last night the pole dancing porcupine, Moon Pie, wanted a bottle. I really wonder if she will ever give it up, but then if she does she will probably exchange it for a beer bottle. Anyway, all the other animals were asleep, including the batch of baby possums I have in the studio.

Now these possums are probably somewhere between the size of a large mouse and a very small rat and they get baby food (otherwise known as “baby meat and baby slop” on the shopping list), with goatmilk poured over it. Sometimes if I’ve mixed up extra for the porcupine, they get squirrel milk (I really want to meet the guy that milks those squirrels)

They LOVE the squirrel formula. They tolerate the goat milk.

So about 11:15 Pm. I go and make Moon Pie her night bottle. She likes it with a little Gerber sweet potato with cinnamon mixed in. (Hey, none of that cheap-assed Sprout or Meijer for my girl, that’s for possums). I sit down with her in the desk chair and all of a sudden these little possum faces pop up out of the bottom of their cage. They ended up literally, drooling through the wire. They went from a sound sleep to ‘Hey I can smell that” is 10 seconds or less.

That’s a pretty good nose.

As an experiment, I gave them two dishes of milk. One squirrel, one goat. EVERYBODY was at the squirrel dish, except for Oscar,( there’s something not quite right about that boy). Then I gave them one dish of the Gerber cinnamon sweet potato and a dish of Meijer, squash, plumb and beets (yea, I know babies eat disgusting things). Oscar dove into the squash face first and wallowed. Everybody else just licked him off later.

Then I thought, “hey, there must be something to this and I TASTED the two formulas. I’d put that squirrel stuff in my coffee instead of creamer. It was that good. Too bad it’s so expensive.

So the take away on this? 1. I’ll do about anything after midnight. 2. We need to milk more squirrels. 3. Possums have very discerning noses and 4.I think Oscar and I have a lot in common brainwise.