Not Playing Possum

I couldn't get a picture of the best thing from today. I was looking out the kitchen window, and staring back at me was the pointed white face of a little opossum! She had that permanently startled look that all 'possums seem to have (if you've actually seen one that isn't dead in the road). I ran out with the camera, but she (?) lumbered back under the pine trees to her hiding place quicker than I could get there. We've had light fluffy snow all day so even the tracks weren't definitive enough to bother to picture. I hunted for where she might have holed up but it's pretty dense under the pines, and I wasn't willing to work that hard. Maybe she will come out again. 'Possums don't actually hibernate, but they do sleep quite a lot in the winter. Last summer I was lucky enough to find a dead one that hadn't been smashed or chewed on. So I now have an opossum skull in my collection. It is so long and thin that it would be difficult to mistake for some other mammal.