Please have a heart... Please don't hurt possums!!!... Please read. Thank you.

The Animal Maximalist Yesterday at 12:26 PM · I am the shadow you see crossing your yard at night, the hunched figure rifling through your trash can, the wide-eyed creature you call ugly, filthy, or even rabid. I am the possum. And though you may not know it, I do more for you than you could ever imagine. I am not fierce. My teeth may look sharp, but they are for crunching beetles, ticks, and the scraps you leave behind. I am shy, gentle, and easily frightened. When danger comes, I do not fight. I fall limp, my body still, my breath shallow. “Playing possum,” you call it. But it is no game. It is the way I survive, a desperate act that often makes people laugh or strike me anyway. I am your unseen ally. Each season I eat thousands upon thousands of ticks — the very parasites that carry Lyme disease, the sickness that threatens your children, your pets, your hikers in the woods. I clean your gardens of slugs and snails, I clear away rotting fruit, I consume dead animals that might otherwise spread disease. Without me, the balance tips, and your world becomes just a little harsher, a little more dangerous. Yet still, I am misunderstood. You mistake me for a rat, though I am not. I am America’s only marsupial, carrying my babies in a pouch like a kangaroo. They cling to my back as I walk the fence line at dusk, their tiny faces peeking over my fur. I am a mother, often burdened with more than a dozen mouths to feed. And still, I keep working — quietly, humbly, invisibly. But often, I die for no reason at all. Your cars strike me on dark roads, and few stop to help. Your dogs chase me, your traps catch me, your hands raise sticks against me. You see me in your yard and think I am a threat, when all I want is to pass through and move on. Many of my kind die in fear, our young left clinging to lifeless bodies, never given a chance. I do not blame you entirely. Fear is powerful. My face, with its pointed snout and unblinking eyes, unnerves you. My slow shuffle makes me seem sickly. You see only the surface and not the service. You see a scavenger, not a caretaker. You see a pest, not a protector. Do you know what happens when you let me be? Fewer ticks on your pets. Fewer rotting carcasses on the roadside. Cleaner gardens and healthier ecosystems. I ask for so little — a patch of dark to move in, a safe passage under your porch, the chance to raise my young in peace. And so, I plead with you: look at me differently. See not a rat, but a marsupial mother. See not a pest, but a partner. See not an intruder, but a night worker who cleans what you cannot see. When you catch me in your yard, remember that I am carrying out a mission that benefits you more than it benefits me. Leave me to my work, and I will leave you in peace. Protect the wild corners of your neighborhoods. Teach your children that possums are not monsters but quiet helpers. For every small kindness you show me, I return it in ways you may never notice — but would surely miss if I were gone. I am the possum. I am mocked, yet essential. I am feared, yet I mean no harm. I am dying in numbers too great to ignore, and I am asking you, from the quiet of the night: let me live, so that you may live better too.>> The Animal Maximalist

Let"s...

 

Oh, --- Those Trolls!!!...

 

Trolls In Scandinavian folklore:

Skogtroll (Forest Troll), by Theodor Kittelsen, 1906

   Numerous tales are recorded about trolls in which they are frequently described as being extremely old, very strong, but slow and dim-witted, and are at times described as man-eaters and as turning to stone upon contact with sunlight. However, trolls are also attested as looking much the same as human beings, without any particularly hideous appearance about them, but living far away from human habitation and generally having "some form of social organization"—unlike the rå and näck, who are attested as "solitary beings". 

   According to John Lindow, what sets them apart is that they are not Christian, and those who encounter them do not know them. Therefore, trolls were in the end dangerous, regardless of how well they might get along with Christian society, and trolls display a habit of bergtagning ('kidnapping'; literally "mountain-taking") and overrunning a farm or estate.

   Lindow states that the etymology of the word "troll" remains uncertain, though he defines trolls in later Swedish folklore as "nature beings" and as "all-purpose otherworldly being[s], equivalent, for example, to fairies in Anglo-Celtic traditions". They "therefore appear in various migratory legends where collective nature-beings are called for". Lindow notes that trolls are sometimes swapped out for cats and "little people" in the folklore record.

   A Scandinavian folk belief that lightning frightens away trolls and jötnar appears in numerous Scandinavian folktales, and may be a late reflection of the god Thor's role in fighting such beings. In connection, the lack of trolls and jötnar in modern Scandinavia is sometimes explained as a result of the "accuracy and efficiency of the lightning strokes".  Additionally, the absence of trolls in regions of Scandinavia is described in folklore as being a "consequence of the constant din of the church-bells". This ringing caused the trolls to leave for other lands, although not without some resistance; numerous traditions relate how trolls destroyed a church under construction or hurled boulders and stones at completed churches. Large local stones are sometimes described as the product of a troll's toss. Additionally, into the 20th century, the origins of particular Scandinavian landmarks, such as particular stones, are ascribed to trolls who may, for example, have turned to stone upon exposure to sunlight.

The Princess and the Trolls –The Changeling, by John Bauer, 1913

   Lindow compares the trolls of the Swedish folk tradition to Grendel, the supernatural mead hall invader in the Old English poem Beowulf, and notes that "just as the poem Beowulf emphasizes not the harrying of Grendel but the cleansing of the hall of Beowulf, so the modern tales stress the moment when the trolls are driven off."

   Smaller trolls are attested as living in burial mounds and in mountains in Scandinavian folk tradition. In Denmark, these creatures are recorded as troldfolk ("troll-folk"), bjergtrolde ("mountain-trolls"), or bjergfolk ("mountain-folk") and in Norway also as troldfolk ("troll-folk") and tusser. Trolls may be described as small, human-like beings or as tall as men depending on the region of origin of the story.

   In Norwegian tradition, similar tales may be told about the larger trolls and the Huldrefolk ("hidden-folk"), yet a distinction is made between the two. The use of the word trow in Orkney and Shetland, to mean beings which are very like the Huldrefolk in Norway, may suggest a common origin for the terms. The word troll may have been used by pagan Norse settlers in Orkney and Shetland as a collective term for supernatural beings who should be respected and avoided rather than worshipped. Troll could later have become specialized as a description of the larger, more menacing Jötunn-kind whereas Huldrefolk may have developed as the term for smaller trolls.

   John Arnott MacCulloch posited a connection between the Old Norse vættir and trolls, suggesting that both concepts may derive from spirits of the dead.

   Troll, a Norwegian research station in Antarctica, is so named because of the rugged mountains which stand around that place like trolls. It includes a ground station which tracks satellites in polar orbit.

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