It is with both delight and nervousness that I introduce the wider public to my new guiding light, someone whose existence I only learned about this morning. She is timelessly chic. She harbors an obsession that many people might label as “concerning” or “gross.” She is a woman who exists at the precise intersection of two of my most enduring pastimes: dressing incongruously and fostering love for widely maligned animals.
I am, as you might have suspected, talking about the “Opossum Lady,” a certified freak for opossums, who has regularly been posting deranged videos with the marsupials on her dedicated YouTube page MePearlA for an entire decade. Over the years, the Opossum Lady — who goes by Georgette Spelvin — has educated viewers on how to properly massage an opossum and treat one to a pedicure. A few months ago, she posted a video — featuring not only one opossum, but also two squirrels — discussing proper coronavirus precautions, in which her voice is so muffled by her bright-yellow mask, it’s nearly imperceptible. In a personal favorite, where she dons a black eye mask “for flair,” she speaks straight-faced about her dear opossum named POTUS, who apparently had plans to challenge Donald Trump for president, had he not died.
While her subject matter varies and her coterie rotates, her presence is remarkably consistent: In every video, she appears with perfectly coiffed and structured blouses, and an unparalleled enthusiasm for all things opossum.
She is so delightfully peculiar that at times, it’s hard to believe that she is in fact an actual person — which brings me to my next point. She might not be human? Or so suggests her YouTube bio and associated website, which indicate that she serves as a medium for Pearl, one of Georgette’s dead — or, to use her word, “ascended” — squirrels. We can only hope that one day, Pearl may pass the mic to the recently deceased POTUS, whose political guidance we might be able to use right now.
