opossums love brownies

Time warp......It is still a mystery to me what failed when I baked those brownies. They came out of the oven like a big slab of rock-hard brown concrete. Some how, some way Ange managed to get them out of the pan for me. I'm pretty sure a hammer and chisel were involved. Instead of throwing them out in the garbage, our boys suggested that the birds might peck at and eat the 'brownies.' So out to the bird feeder the brownie hunks went. We didn't see any birds, but come early evening we saw a chubby opossum perched inside the bird feeder. The opossum was in the process of furiously stuffing the brownies in his mouth. His cheeks were puffed out! We were all laughing, but still kind of worried that he would get really sick from eating an entire 9 x 13" pan of brownies.  At any rate, the opossum *completely* cleaned out the feeder, shimmied back down the pole to the ground, and slowly waddled off.

When it comes to my brownie-baking skills, this story has become legend in our family. Ange and the boys refuse to let it go, even to this day. But there's one thing we know for sure; opossums love brownies!

The opossum received its name in the early 1600s from Captain John Smith of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. The name is derived from aposoum, a Virginia Algonquian word meaning “white beast.” Did you know the opossum is North America’s only known marsupial? It carries its young in a pouch much like the Australian kangaroo. The opossum is a nocturnal scavenger, often visiting dumpsters and garbage cans. Their diet includes roadkill, insects, frogs, birds, snakes and fruits. When hunted the opossum possesses an instinct to play dead, or “play possum” when threatened.

Facts from nationalgeographic.com