Friday, January 19, 2007

Beauty

As I was drying my hair this morning I could hear B yelling, "There's a 'possum in the backyard!" I ran for my camera. He just sat there as I took shot after shot. They are definitely not pretty animals. I think he may live in the vines on our back wall.

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
~ John Constable

10 comments:

Unknown said...

That's a possum all right! When we lived in CA, we had a mama and her six babies living behind our washing machine! We had to put amonia back there to get her to move on.

Then in OH we had a mama and babies crossing our backyard. They heard my camera click (this was last year) and the mama dumped her babies and ran. I was just sick! Liam cried. It was awful. Later that day, we noticed that they were all gone and I google to find out that often the mother comes back after a scare. I hope so!

This photo is incredible and I can't believe it didn't scare.

Colleen said...

Uh, I guess John Constable never saw an opossum, because yeah, they qualify as UGLY things. And y'know what's even uglier? The SMELL when they DIE in the crawl space of your home. Ask me how I know.

Colleen said...

Oh, I forgot to mention this, in response to Julie's comment: Opossums don't scare. They are perfectly happy to come up to your porch and eat apples while you stand right there watching them. They are thrilled to root around in your trash while you cut the grass. Ask me how I know. ;-) Do you sense I have strong, negative associations with these critters? (But hey, your picture IS really good, Nikki!)

Sandie said...

Nikki, it is amazing that he just sat there while you took his picture. He is so ugly he's cute :) The picture is great though!

SUSAN said...

I think possums are cute but they are pests, no doubt about it. Great photo, Nikki!

Susan

my15minutes said...

This shot made me laugh. Even a possum has personality, through the eye of your camera! And the quote is perfect. He's right, of course...the perspective of that long snout ending in the sunlit nose, his face framed by the shade of dark fur... it really IS beautiful. I'm amazed at your ability to match quote and picture!

LauraLiz said...

I love this photo!! And I'm one of the rare people who think possums CAN be beautiful.

I had a brother who trapped possums to sell "down the road" for food. Great.

Imagine my suprise when opening my kitchen shades one morning to find the biggest possum I've ever seen standing on my deck! He was clean and healthy looking; a city possum for sure. :-) The ones I'm used to are skinny and scraggly.

(I've never seen one with babies, though, Julie. I'm SURE your mama came back for her little ones!!)

my15minutes said...

Possums are cool, unless you are four years old and you take a bag out to the trash can and there is one who has crawled inside. Did you know that the possum has more teeth than any other mammal?

My dd still shudders at the sight of a possum. However, I think yours is kinda cute.

Ampersand said...

Hey, I'm late to the comment party, but boy was I surprised when I saw your picture. Not anything that I expected :-).

Great shot, too.

It amazes me the kinds of things that all of us 365'ers are capturing just because we have our camera's ready at the aim.

Dancingirl said...

Very late to view this, but have to comment! Love this! So considerate of him to pose for you! I'm with whoever said they're so ugly they're cute.