Tuesday, December 12, 2006

News from all over - Englewood

A mom who hurled last year's Christmas tree out in the yard of this Pennsylvania town when an opossum popped out, scaring her teenage daughter, said the family will stick with an artificial tree this year.

"My daughter's still afraid she'll look at the tree and see eyes looking back at her," Patricia A. O'Connor said. Though her husband, Michael, would like a real tree, she said, "We thought we'd give it one more year."

Daughter Mary Kathleen O'Connor was doing her homework by the tree a few days before Christmas 2005, when, she said at the time, "this head just popped up. ... I was thinking, 'Oh my God!' And I screamed."

The family came running, and called the state Game Commission. A wildlife conservation officer removed an 18-inch-long opossum and released it in the woods about five miles away.