One thing I miss living here in Scotland is the smell of possums.

There are no opossums in the Scottish woodlands. Nor are there snakes (except rare elusive adders) armadillos, raccoons, bobcats, turtles, porcupines, cougars, lizards, ringtails…a long list of are nots. They are not here in Scotland. But it is the smell of opossums that I miss most.

When we were kids growing up in Georgia, the Hesters were next-door neighbors—living some distance away up a long steep hill. Billy and Bobby were my age and their brother Ronnie was my sister Leslie’s age. The five of us spent almost every day outside of school hours together adventuring through the woods. One thing that made me a favorite with Billy and Bobby was that I could smell opossums. They couldn’t. Their father would send them off into the woods with possum traps so they could catch a varmint for dinner. I would follow my nose to a possum hollow and they would catch their meal. Then, before the hapless animal could be killed—I would race down the hill to my house and beg my parents—who were almost as broke as the Hesters—for a couple of quarters so I could buy the possum and turn it loose on our property. Mr. Hester didn’t care if he had a possum for dinner—or enough money to buy something else more palatable. I think he was rather fond of my possum-sniffing nose.

Billy and Bobby also depended on me to steer them clear of poisonous snakes. I took herpetology as my 4-H project and went to the state level with my project on how to identify poisonous and non-poisonous snakes. I lectured the Hester boys on the importance of not killing harmless snakes because they were good rodent catchers. Whenever they found a corn snake or milk snake in the barn, they sought me and asked if it was a harmless or poisonous. Expecting me to be an expert on anything was hitching their wagons to a falling star. I wasn’t a Christian back then and did not know even one Bible verse—like Proverb 16:18 for instance; “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

One Saturday I appeared on the 4-H channel on TV demonstrating how to tell the difference between harmless and poisonous snakes. On Sunday, I chased a snake in our pond. I wanted to catch it so I could identify it. I caught it. It was venomous. It was a water moccasin. It bit me. So the Sunday afternoon after showcasing myself on TV the day before—I was in the hospital receiving treatment for the water moccasin bite.

Perhaps it’s a good thing there are no snakes in Scotland.

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