High above the town of Sequim toward the Olympics on Lost Mountain Highway, autumn winds blow yellow leaves across a checkered landscape of forest, hidden homes and a large clearcut.
The scar from the clearcut years ago remains today after removal of a once beautiful canopy of fir, cedar and well-marked trails from deer, elk and bear. Mother Nature has never recovered from the leveled forest, which is now covered in a dense slash of limbs, branches, discarded timber, vines, blackberries and salal. There are a few conifers, but dominant fast-growing alders that have fallen or bowed over from shallow roots and powerful winds. The entangled web of growth and underbrush has created a fortress around the entire clearcut which has made it impossible for man, dog and large mammals to set foot inside of it.
The one prominent feature of the clearcut is a 20-foot high slash pile of scarred logs heaped high at the base and sides. The slash pile of desecration is now a castle for one solitary, vulnerable creature. A female opossum, who is at the far end of her range, lives inside it, and without its insulated warmth, would perish from an extreme cold winter.
Unlike her rural counterparts, she is free from deadly human encounters, dogs, cats, coyotes and roads, but she faces her own daily challenges to stay alive. Families of hawks and owls perched high in tall bordering conifers with telescopic eyes can easily view any movements of small mammals in the clearcut. The resident raptors rarely go hungry as the clearcut has been a killing field of plenty.
At dawn and the first glimpse of light, the female opossum waddles outside, carrying nine tiny inchoate babies with each one attached to a nipple inside her pouch. She has an innate sense that raptors above are inactive and waiting for the sun to warm their wings, and owls are drowsy from hunting all night.
Mother Opossum creeps underneath fallen branches and underbrush on faint trails from rabbits, squirrels, racoons and mice to reach the center of the clearcut. She hides in tall grasses close by dragged timber that have left ruts filled with puddles of water. The small watering holes attract a plethora of creatures thirsty from the heat of the sun.
She patiently waits and pounces on startled tree frogs and slow-moving toads, and with a full belly, heads for home. She rests in ephemeral bliss as she nurses and feels the heartbeat of every infant next to her heart.
As hunger returns and darkness falls, Mother Opossum leaves home and creeps under brush to hunt on familiar trails. She is aware of two dangers at night: One which she cannot understand and the other she has experienced in the past.
She stays clear of fleeting roars and flashing lights passing through bordering conifers on one side of the clearcut. The other danger in the moonlit landscape is the soundless wings of barn owls detecting movement in the ground cover and crashing down to pick up some unsuspecting small animal.
She does not have to venture far and lies motionless in brush next to a trail and waits for active mice and voles at night to appear. She attacks several mice, devours them and returns home to nurse her hungry family.
Months pass, and the fall drought continues unabated as normal westerly winds and cooler temperatures are nonexistent. The relentless sun penetrates every living thing in the shadeless clearcut and has a devastating impact on the vegetation, predators and prey. Vital pithy tissue retreats to the heart of every shrub and brush, and outstretched limbs become brittle and fall to the ground. Rut filled water holes have become circles of sunbaked mud. All reptiles, amphibians and small mammals have disappeared as hunger and thirst reign over the entire clearcut.
Mother Opossum, driven by immense hunger for herself and her young, travels further from home. She is uneasy with the passing of early dawn and the lack of mice and voles still alive who remain in the coolness of their burrows. She finds countless dead mice shriveled up in hair balls from the continual heat. She explores a new stretch of dense brush and bushes, looking for berries that dried up long ago and fallen on the ground. As she creeps further, a Red-Tailed Hawk spots movement in the thorny brush and dives down for a knockout blow. The hawk’s talons and beak tear away brush and sod, but it is unable to reach her. As time passes, the agitated hawk shrieks and flies away.
Mother Opossum waits for hours, panting and bleeding on her back from scratches and thorns. She limps home with her young inside her pouch and others clinging to her sides.
Weeks pass, and the unusual warmth continues day and night with no chance of rain. Mother Opossum, faced with constant thirst, chews on sparse green leaves and grass roots to eke out some moisture. She is weakened, rarely tasting flesh and lives on bitter-tasting beetles, ants, grasshoppers and other insects. This meager diet is insufficient to sustain her and her nine growing infants. She hears their cries of hunger and is sucked dry from her inadequate supply of low-quality milk.
One restless night at the first tint of light in the sky, Mother Opossum succumbs to the unthinkable. She has always avoided any trails leading to the dangerous roars and flashing lights seen through the border of trees on one side of the clearcut.
She has no choice, for to stay alive and feed her family, she must leave the security of the clearcut in search of food. She creeps on unfamiliar trails, fearful with her young, and reaches the border of trees. She hesitates but is bolstered by the silence. She quickly moves down an embankment, into and over a ditch and lands on a strange hard surface with nothing to eat beneath her feet. She is unaware that she is in the middle of a highway with nowhere to hide and not knowing where it will end. She becomes disoriented, moving in circles and frantically changes direction on the pavement and finds herself in a forest on the other side next to the highway. She immediately breathes in cool, fresh air and far from the warm-smelling odor of decomposing grasses at the clearcut.
She enters the forest floor, lightly carpeted in discolored leaves, and underneath in moist spots are numerous earthworms, snails and slugs. She gorges herself in the plentiful supply and joins several of her bold infants who are brave enough to leave her side to consume large amounts of seeds fallen from the trees.
A short time later, she emits low-sounding clicks, and her young immediately respond and grab onto her sides. She traces her scent, crosses the highway and climbs up the embankment to follow familiar trails back to the castle.
For the first time in a long time, hunger, thirst and worry have vanished. Mother Opossum and her family lay together, content and secure as she preens each one that gathers around her face to vie for attention. They soon fall asleep with the imprinted memory of the cool forest and the ease of finding food.
The next day at dawn, Mother Opossum and her young are rested and excited to return to the forest. They quickly reach the border of trees, and Mother Opossum is frightened by the noise and lights that quickly fade away. She waits for silence, then climbs down the embankment onto the highway. Suddenly, roars become louder in both directions. She momentarily freezes and is struck on her rear, whimpers in pain, tries to move as her life slowly oozes from her body. Several of her infants are instantly killed while others, covered in blood, bury themselves in her sides and die of shock.
As morning traffic increases, drivers pass the bloody clump with nary a thought as simply roadkill. Others see blood and quickly turn their heads. Soon, crows and hawks will discover her body and scavenge it until nothing is left but a patch of hair.
Later in the morning, Tony and Terri Wang, long time volunteers at Precious Life Animal Sanctuary, are on their way to feed the rescued farm animals and two orphan racoons. As they drive up the steep highway, they see the small body of bloody fur.
They both are affected by what they see as another tragic loss of wildlife trying to survive amongst ever-increasing roads and highways. They find a place to pull off some distance away and walk down the side of the highway to the body. They see that it is a mother opossum with her dead infants. They remove her farther away from the highway and discover three attached traumatized infants still alive.
They pick them up, carry them back to the car and head for home knowing it will take around-the-clock feeding and care to save them. The two new surrogate mothers began feeding them special warm milk and carried them everywhere in cloth-made pouches next to their chests. In a short period of time, the three gentle survivors feel secure and bond to their giant caregivers. They continue to grow and become more active and healthy.
Tony and Terri become emotionally attached and name the three Norm(al), Small and Lady Gaga (uncanny resemblance). Tony and Terri make the difficult decision to part with the three and take them to a wildlife rehabilitation facility to continue their care and release them in a safer environment.
Weeks pass and cool winds off the straits gently sway trees in nearby forests and blanket the clearcut and surrounding area in dense fog. As the mist slowly rises and drifts away, the clearcut is covered in wetness, and beads of dew drip from scarce leaves into the mouths of thirsty survivors. Songbirds and tree frogs once again emit their familiar calls, and the vegetation shows new traces of green.
The rebirth is short lived, however, as the sun returns and shines brightly on the clearcut, and the castle remains empty.