Our own PETRIFIED forest!

So, as the story always goes...Ben was at work and I was home with my kids, Bodin's friends, and McKinna's friends as well as one of McKinna's friends moms. The kids were all out in my front yard playing kickball in the cul-de-sac. The ball got kicked up in the tree and got stuck. As they were getting ready to throw another ball at the first ball to try to get it out one of the neighbor kids spots the oppossum. She points it out and we all take a look. It is hanging there straddling the branch with its' front and back legs just hanging there...AND IT IS DEAD AS DEAD CAN BE! The neighbor child is insistant on getting her father to get it down. I demand that is not necessary, but she beckons to him anyway. Great, more people in my front yard looking at my dead oppossum.
The father comes over with a shovel to tap it out of the tree. This is not working as it has petrified around the tree limb and has become one with the tree so he goes and gathers up his ladder and gloves. He climbs up the tree and gives it a slight tug, and to the horror of all the little children the leg pops off and falls to the ground. Actually, the kiddos think it may be the coolest thing since sliced bread. He then gently pulls it off the branch and shows its petrified body to everyone. As this is happening, wouldn't you know it, the pizza man shows up with the fathers' pizza. Holding the dead oppossum, he lets him know that he should probably go to the door and have his wife pay. I guarantee that every one of those kids went home and told of their great adventures to their parents.
Later that night, Ben comes home and I relay the days events to him. I comment that I can't believe we never smelled him. That is when he reminds me that a few months back we kept finding oppossum hair in our yard, beneath that tree, and it did smell a bit. I figured a cat had killed it and left its hair for me. Geez, why did I not think to look up in the tree. Why do these things always happen when Ben is at work?