A GOOD HABIT GONE WRONG 
A more important question is: Of what good is the ruse? 
How many enemies are sufficiently deceived by it to go away 
and leave him undisturbed? Would a cat, a wolf, or a big owl 
neglect to seize an opossum and eat him because he pretended 
death? What do they care whether 
he is dead or not —if it is true, they 
have been saved some trouble. Lin- 
cecum states that in Texas “turkey 
buzzards will alight near where they 
find an opossum feeding in the 
woods, and running up on him will 
flap their wings violently over him 
a few times, when the opossum goes 
into a spasm, and the buzzards very 
deliberately proceed to pick out its 
exposed eyes and generally take a 
pretty good bite from its neck and 
shoulders; the opossum lying on 
its side all the time and grunting. 
I have twice seen a buzzard do as 
described.”” Beside this must be 
placed the universal testimony that 
a mother opossum will sit up and 
defend her babies against anything 
and everything, —no fainting for 
her! (1s it, I wonder, only the 
roaming males who “play possum” ?) It is difficult to see 
how any animal, friend or foe, that comes near enough to 
cause an opossum to play dead, or fall into a fit, or whatever 
it is that he does do, and consequently comes near enough 
to smell the warmth and odor of the creature’s body, could 
be deceived for a moment; yet if it neither deceives nor 
defends, of what service is the act? May it not be merely a 
survival of a practice, now obsolete, involuntary, and really 
519 
Copyrt., N.Y. Z. 8. Sanborn, Phot. 
MURINE OPOSSUM. 
