The biggest baby opossum looked and looked with his little bright eyes. He wanted to see more. So up he crawled, clambering over the soft, tiny bodies of the eleven other babies. Some of them wriggled and squirmed under his bare little feet. After slipping back once or twice he reached the edge and poked his pointed white snout outside.
He could not see anything because he was under his mother, and her long fur hung down over him. She was lying on a nest of grasses in a hollow tree. That was where she stayed all day long when the sun was shining without. Every night at dusk she climbed down the rough trunk and went to hunt for something to eat.
When she felt the tiny claws of her baby clutching her fur she looked down between her fore-paws at the little mouse-like fellow. Then with her smooth pink hands she gently pushed him back into the pocket and closed the opening. He was not big enough yet to come out of the warm, dark nursery.
So for a week longer he cuddled down beside the others, while they all slept and drank more milk and grew stronger every hour. The biggest baby was so restless that he scrambled around and crowded the others. Once he caught hold of another’s tail between the thumbs and fingers of his hind-feet, and pulled till the little one squeaked. His fore-feet were like tiny hands without any thumbs.
At last, one day, he saw the edge of the pocket open a crack. He was so glad that he climbed up as fast as he could scramble, and pushed outside. He held on to his mother’s fur with all four feet. When she reached down to smell him the bristles on her lips tickled his nose. Then he climbed around upon her back and twisted his tail about hers to hold him steady.
The Opossum.
“In a few minutes another and another baby followed the big brother and clung there on the mother’s furry back.” Page 5.
He looked like a mouse, with his long tail, his black ears erect, his bright eyes twinkling in his little white face, and his pointed nose sniffing at the strange odors in the hollow tree. It was much lighter there than inside the pocket. Higher up over his head there was a hole leading out of the hollow. Queer small shadows were dancing and flickering across the opening. He did not know that they were only green leaves.
In a few minutes another and another baby followed the big brother and clung there on the mother’s furry back. It must have seemed a noisy place to them, for while in the pocket they had noticed only the softest muffled rustling and scratching of the old one’s feet in the nest. Now they could hear a chirping and a squeaking and a rattling of branches. They crowded close together in fright at the scream of a blue jay, as it chased a chattering red squirrel through the tree-top. Then a sudden loud thump-thump-thump of a woodpecker hammering on the bark outside sent them scuttling back to the safe nursery in a tumbling hurry.
After this the whole family climbed out every day to play about on the mother’s back. The biggest baby liked to curl his small tail about her large one, and then swing off head downward. Sometimes he pushed the others down just for the fun of seeing them scramble up again, hand over hand, clutching the long fur.