i walked past a palm tree yesterday.
so did someone else, who i found myself unintentionally following, if only momentarially. probably also on their way home. it's an overcast day; it'd been raining on and off for a while and with the sun beginning to set the light has just started to fade.
i'd like to think i'm reasonably attentive. spot things that appear only for an instant. it can be annoying — you feel like a liar when you point out that motion in the distance that nobody else saw, but a little vindicated when there's actually something there. or like a liar again when there really wasn't.
my attention is caught.
motion, about two stories up and to the left.
a palm frond.
palm trees like to drop those. they die off and fall quite a distance to the ground. my unintentional walking buddy in this purely parasocial exercise relationship is near directly under the palm tree.
the frond misses him by a fraction of an inch.
we all continue to walk.
as i myself begin to pass the tree, i do a double take. the frond just moved.
at the base of the palm tree lies not a frond, but a possum. a possum who's now taken the widest and tallest stance they can presumably muster; all four legs outstretched, back arched, eyes locked forward.
yeah that. uh. that was a possum. not a palm frond. you'll have to imagine the little guy above taking a full Stance.
they're ok — to be clear. we ponder if there's anything we can do. i'd probably be a little shaken up if i fell two stories, too. nothing obvious comes to mind (especially with our own confusion only now giving way to logic) and our fuzzy paratrooper rounds the trunk to clamber their way back up from the other side.
we all continue to walk.
this time, eyes on the trunk, watching two lil guys climb, climb, climb.
two???
there's a smaller possum, clearly much younger than our initial wanna-be sugar glider, in hot pursuit of… gotta be its mother, right? they near the tree's canopy and the little one takes a couple extra steps to hop onto its mother's back. they both seem safe again, if shaken.
we all continue to walk.