The Opossum of the Future


  ONE day an Opossum who had gone to sleep hanging from the highest 
branch of a tree by the tail, awoke and saw a large Snake wound 
about the limb, between him and the trunk of the tree.

  "If I hold on," he said to himself, "I shall be swallowed; if I let 
go I shall break my neck."

  But suddenly he bethought himself to dissemble.

  "My perfected friend," he said, "my parental instinct recognises in 
you a noble evidence and illustration of the theory of development.  
You are the Opossum of the Future, the ultimate Fittest Survivor of 
our species, the ripe result of progressive prehensility - all 
tail!"

  But the Snake, proud of his ancient eminence in Scriptural history, 
was strictly orthodox, and did not accept the scientific view.