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My old dog Toby had to have back surgery suddenly one winter. One of his discs had disintegrated and it was a big operation; we had to go to Knoxville to the U-Tenn veterinary college and it was touch and go. A week later Toby came home, unable to walk and with a shaved back and tail. Slowly, slowly he recovered and as he started moving again, for whatever reason, he went sideways with a weird scuttling motion. Toby was a big dog, mostly German Shepherd but it turned out his skin was yellow under all that black fur and his big tail was not so pretty without feathers.
So my brother comes in from NY in the middle of Toby's recovery and we're sitting there having beers on the porch watching this shaved yellow - creature - running sideways in the yard. "You know," observed my brother thoughtfully, "It's hard to say what he looks like but I tell you one thing - if I saw that coming at me in the dark I'd run like hell." "He's a possum crab," I said, "Naked tail, moves sideways. The dreaded Possum Crab strikes again!"