Possums Quotes

“I walked through a forest near a highway until I found a clump of moss to sleep on and remembered that Simon said possums were not indigenous to New Zealand, that they had been brought here by somebody a long time ago, some European, and since there were no animals here that liked to kill possums, all those unkilled possums had fucked up the whole fucking ecosystem by eating plants, too many plants, by wanting so much, and now there were what? --ten or fifteen possums per person in New Zealand? Something fucked up like that; and I imagined my dozen fucked-up possums gathered around me, a personal audience, and I wondered which things inside a person might be indigenous or nonindigenous, but it isn’t as easy to trace those kinds of things in a person as it is in a country. I wished that I could point to some colonizer and blame him for everything that was nonindigenous in me, whoever or whatever had fucked my ecosystem, had made me misunderstand myself--but I couldn’t blame anyone for what was in me, because I am, like everyone, populated entirely by myself,”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“A customer once asked me if I was really an employee of the store of if I was just three possums in a trench coat. I was so confused by the remark, the customer had to explain it to me. She said that possums are notoriously skittish. I said But what about the trench coat, though? I'm not wearing a trench coat.”
― Emily Austin