A ghastly grin...

When you spend as much time outside as we do, you find a lot of things that have reached the ends of their lives. This opossum is an example. To some it may seem a gross or disgusting thing to take a picture of, but we don't see it that way. We see it as a chance to remind ourselves of the natural order of things. This 'possum filled a certain niche while it was alive. During that life it consumed pretty much whatever it could - opossums are scavenging omnivores. Now that it is dead, all those nutrients and chemicals that were bound up in its tissues have begun to return to the system where they'll be taken up by some other plant or animal. Seems perfectly right to us. Oh, and if you aren't all that accoustomed to looking at skulls then you might want to know that this one is upside down.