Georgina Spelvin is also known as ME Pearl, a psychic and lover of "lowly life forms." In her series of Proper Opossum Care videos, she extolls the wonders of these nocturnal, trash-eating creatures with all the polish of a 1960s TV hostess channeling the spirit of an all-knowing squirrel named Pearl.
In one video she describes how to identify when your pet opossum is sending you alien alerts; another describes how to read your opossum's past lives. In this video, she offers tips on how to relax your opossum with chakra-aligning boops and baps. Its strangeness invited the question–who is the opossum lady? Is she for real?
In actuality, ME Pearl is a character played by actress Anna Dresdon. The off-the-cuff silliness of her videos is intentionally comedic, and her website provides a link to "Georgina's" YouTube profile. However, ME Pearl has her own robust website complete with a donation button, and the videos themselves offer no hints that they are satirical or fake. They're just good-hearted marsupial fun.
So perhaps the wisdom of Pearl is genuine? At the very least you now know how to properly massage your opossum.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Emailella@atlasobscura.com.