{"id":17703,"date":"2020-04-02T10:23:06","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T14:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=17703"},"modified":"2020-04-14T08:57:29","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T12:57:29","slug":"creature-feature-the-fortean-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/creature-feature-the-fortean-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"Creature Feature: The Fortean Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 450px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23d2d2d2&amp;d=maineguide_2020&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=90&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<em>By Joan Connor<\/em><\/p>\n<p>How it began: at dusk it came. It came from the forest, slinking ghostly with its planchette-shaped head, with its scare-quote eyes, its following rat\u2019s tail. I had been tossing peanuts on the deck for the chippies, for the squirrels. It, with its star-shaped hands, apparently liked them too, cracking the shells, gobbling the legumes. At first, I was frightened. But then gradually, slowly, incrementally, as is so often in life, I became accustomed to it, him, her, them. Perhaps even fond? Soon five of them, six, appeared feedin\u00a0 at dusk, sometimes later. Some nights they squabbled, squirmed for position, but their skirmishes were histrionic\u2014a turned back, palmed peanuts. A half-hearted hiss or growl. And, yes, they played possum. They played possum while Little Dog, my terrier, sniffed or scampered before the French door.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Read the full story in the digital magazine above.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MaineGuide 2020 Fiction by Joan Connor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[891,23,446,890,889,447],"class_list":["post-17703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-creature-feature","tag-fiction","tag-joan-connor","tag-opossum","tag-possum","tag-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17741,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703\/revisions\/17741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}