The Possum Who Wasn’t Playing Dead
TWO POSSUMS, A female and her mate, quarreled one night so long and late that Inspector Mastiff and Sergeant Dachshund came out to investigate. They found the female possum smoothing her hair with an automatic, and putting a record on the gramophone. “My mate is playing like he was dead,” she said coolly.
“He’s playing plenty good like he was dead, because he is,” said Mastiff, bending over the body behind the sofa.
“If I could shoot like I used to could, I could of done it, but I can’t, and so I didn’t,” explained the possum’s widow.
Sergeant Dachshund was writing in his notebook: “These kind of murders are getting more all the time. It’s got so a male can’t get up for a drink in the night without his mate shoots him down before he can climb back in bed.”
Inspector Mastiff stepped quietly to the gramophone and turned off “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.” He searched the record albums hastily, until he came upon “Kentucky Babe,” and he put it on the gramophone. The female possum was twenty feet away when the soloist came to “Possum for your breakfast, when your sleepin’ time is done,” but she shot the record off the turntable with the ease of an expert.
“You can still shoot as good as you used to could,” growled Inspector Mastiff.
“And that’s enough evidence for he and I,” piped up Sergeant Dachshund.
“Whatta you gudda do?” quavered the guilty possum.
“We gudda play house—station house,” grunted Inspector Mastiff, and he and the sergeant led her to their squad car.
“Okay, I done it,” said the late possum’s widow on the way to the police station. “He come home once too often with bunny hairs on his lapel. You don’t get them hairs at no rat race, like where he always said he was.”
As the car sped along, Sergeant Dachshund thought ruefully, “Everybody who wants to die with their boots on should go to bed fully clothed.”
MORAL: Husbandslaughter is occasionally just, but why should the mother tongue bite the dust?