As the world swoons over Heidi the cross-eyed possum - that international darling of the Internet; the only marsupial with 150,000 Facebook friends and at least two theme songs on YouTube - critter-lovers back in her home state of North Carolina look on with horror.
Cross-eyed, my eye.
That possum is so fat her eyeballs are bulging out of their sockets, and she wasn't that way when we sent her across the drink.
Whatever they're feeding Heidi at the Leipzig Zoo, in the heart of the German state of Saxony, it's time to consider salads. Grass. Grubs. Earwigs.
And stop taking her picture! She might have thumbs on her hind feet, but she's not a circus freak.
"She's making the news because everyone thinks she looks cute," said Kindra Mammone, executive director of CLAWS, an exotic-animal shelter outside Chapel Hill. "But it's unhealthy. That's an unhealthy possum that's making the news."
Read the complee story at newsobserver.com