<TITLE>16. Par 48-50</TITLE>L-48 A young woman in our town had give birth to a baby. And she didn't want it. So it was a beautiful young woman. And she took the baby and wrapped in a blanket, put a wire around it and took a taxi cab, and went out on the bridge, and dropped in the river. They caught up with her.
So we was setting there talking of that. Mr. and Mrs. Wood here, the book salesman, they were there, just live right across--just door neighbors to me. The milk man was just come up. And setting there on the porch that morning, hot as it could be, I noticed coming up the road and turned in. There was four houses between me and the Arctic Springs, a woods over there. Here come an old opossum dragging along. He went to every one of those places who did not have any fence. And he turned into mine, which has a rock wall and a fence. He started up through the--the driveway.

L-49 Well, now I understand animals a whole lot. I've studied them. I was game warden for years. And I love wildlife, live in it, and study it. And a opossum is blind in daytime, like the owl. He travels at night. In the daytime he doesn't travel, 'less he's disturbed and run out.
Well, here come this opossum, and I wondered why he had turned right up there to my house. I said, "It may have rabies." So I told Gene and Leo here, "I'll..." Went out and got a rake was laying there in the yard, where I believe Brother Wood had been using it, raking up the grass. And so I--I laid the rake over the opossum. And usually, they what they call "play opossum," just grin and lay down.
But instead of that, it bit at the rake. And I wondered, "Well," I said, "I guess it's either got rabies, or it's just mortally hurt." I noticed here, excuse this; it's kind of nasty to say. But there were maggots all over it, the blows from flies. And the green flies was sticking all over it. And this leg had been chewed up by a dog, or--or run over by a car or something, and it was broke and it was dragging like that. Well, she... It was biting at that.

L-50 And I happened to notice, when she was so exhausted, when I laid the rake over her... Now, a opossum, a kangaroo and a opossum is the only two animals that has the pocket they pack their young in. And of course, that's carried up a--like by a nerve, that holds it together. And she was so exhausted, until the pocket let loose. And I noticed why she was fighting so hard; she had nine little naked babies about that long. And when she did let down, well, then I said to the boys; I said, "Now, boys come here. And I will show you a lesson. There's really more mother about this dumb brute, this opossum, than there was about that woman that drowned her baby." That's right.
I said, "You see, that woman, healthy, young, beautiful, just so she could run to roadhouses and have a big time, she drowned that poor little innocent baby and in the river." And I said, "Now, this mother opossum, probably has another twenty minutes to live or thirty. She was mortally wounded." And I said, "She can't live over thirty minutes. And she'll give that thirty minute to fighting for them babies." I said, "There's more mother and real morals about this opossum than there is about that woman."
That's a... A woman is a wonderful thing, a man too, but when they've got away from God, they're lower down than beasts. That's right. They'll do things that a beast wouldn't do. So then, I noticed.


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