Here in Goodboys Nation, once the annual July event is complete, everyone scatters to the four winds. For those in the GB North, there will still be the occasional get together over beers and/or a sports event on TV (not to mention the annual “Viva Las Vegas” February weekend) to look forward to. And when you think of it, there’s no suprise there, as only Pat “Doggy Duval” McLaughlin is a father; the rest of us are basically free agents, accountable to our wives, girlfiriends, jobs, rabbits, Creator, and hockey and softball teams; nomads doing our best to try and keep one step ahead of time, the law, and – for me – the A/C repairman.

As for our cohorts in the South however, it’s a whole different ballgame. Wives, young ‘uns to look after and set a good example for, PTA meetings, saxaphone lessons and football practices. Y’know, pursuing the American Dream in all its hectic glory, and being the hunter-gatherer for the family unit. As such, we don’t get to see Goose, Vegas, and Possum hardly ever between Goodboys weekends, except perhaps for the occasional fall or spring golf outing, and that’s a shame. But that just makes seeing them the next time all that much more enjoyable. Somehow, and I don’t know why that is, it always seems as if Goose and Vegas are more accessible. Maybe it’s because they’re both former Lahey Clinic alumni (as am I), and you can always get them by e-mail if you just want to say hi.

But with Paul “Possum” Shepter, you never really know what the heck is going on between Goodboys events. He comes, he enjoys himself, never practices, plays some pretty good golf, and then he’s gone until the next year. You won’t get an e-mail from him, you won’t hear anything about him, it just seems as if he lives a kind of existential existence in his own Possum way. And while the Nation has kind of gotten used to that, we can’t help but think about what he actually does between Goodboys events.

Now, because of research done by a Fritz Geiser at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales we get the real story:

“I tested the hypothesis that the marsupial pygmy-possum (Cercartetus nanus), an opportunistic nonseasonal hibernator with a capacity for substantial fattening, would continue to hibernate well beyond winter. I also quantified how long they were able to hibernate without access to food before their body fat stores were depleted. Pygmy-possums exhibited a prolonged hibernation season lasting on average for 310 days. The longest hibernation season in one individual lasted for 367 days. For much of this time, despite periodic arousals after torpor bouts of ∼12.5 days, energy expenditure was reduced to only ∼2.5% of that predicted for active individuals. These observations represent the first report on body-fat-fuelled hibernation of up to an entire year and provide new evidence that prolonged hibernation is not restricted to placental mammals living in the cold.”

As Paul Harvey is wont to say, and now you know the rest of the story…