775: The Possum Experiment
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A quick warning. There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, this American life.org. A while back when you first moved to LA, Jessica worked at a pole dancing studio, an exercise place. Pay wasn't great. She was just a receptionist. But there were things about the place that she just loved. You know, we got to take classes. It was just a receptionist and you're in a class with supermodels. Like, I'm not even exaggerating. Like, Cindy Crawford was in my class. And so then it would be, it would be like, you know, Cindy does her dance and then it'd be like, all right, that was beautiful. Jessica, it's your turn. And when you're soloing, you have to solo. Right. Well, the exercise class makes you solo. [ Music ] And then a nice thing about the job. Once she checked everyone in for a class and the class started, she could take these long breaks. Once, she strode over to Starbucks and on the way she saw this poster on a telephone pole, somebody had found a lost animal. And it said pet found above the picture of a cat. And I just thought it was so weird that they said pet found and not cat found. Which got her thinking. And when she got back to work without much to do, she decided to make a poster of her own. I just wrote cat found above two pictures of possums that I had printed off the internet. Like one of the possums kind of looks like he's like crouching disturbed by an invasive camera lens. And then the other possum is hissing. I have to say the tech impossible is actually kind of scary. It's a bearing, it's sharp teeth kind of snarling. And then handwritten underneath, there are bullet points. Male, no collar, not very friendly. I think he might be scared. I said not housebroken either, which I drew a sad face next to. And then it says found on Sunset Boulevard. If he is yours, please call and then a phone number. Yes, my phone number. She made a few copies, less than a dozen, put them up around her neighborhood. The idea that some hapless, well-meaning person would put up a poster like this thinking that they had a cat. Just seemed so funny to her. Joe, it was obvious it was a joke. She really didn't expect the calls. Within two days, my phone just wouldn't stop ringing. And I'm not exaggerating about that. Like, I had to turn my phone off because it was just constantly, constantly, constantly ringing. When I started listening to the voicemails, you know, it was kind of like this very unscientific, I would say, social experiment. Because you could really, like, lock the calls into three groups. And the largest group of people were actually very kindly just calling to tell me that it wasn't a cat. And that it was a possum. I just wanted to let you know that the picture that you have is of a possum and not a cat. So you don't want to call me an animal control because it has rabies. I don't know, it's kind of a wild white guy and that's a possum.
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