opossum

The noises were no stray opossum or raccoon but a man — reportedly naked and, authorities said, living in the crawl space underneath the woman’s home.

A beaver’s tail creates a rhythm on the deck and an opossum has a bass fashioned out of a gourd.

Today, there are only three survivors: the nine-banded armadillo, the Virginia opossum and the North American porcupine.

The demolished deer, the obliterated opossum, the wrecked raccoon: This is the detritus of our human-dominated age.

“I would vote for a roadkill opossum if that was a choice over those three,” Mr. Wirebach said of Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump and the independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.