> When the Virginia opossum feels threatened, she plays dead. Well, the opossum is named "Virginia", so it is only natural to use "she". As a comic in all seri

> When the Virginia opossum feels threatened, she plays dead. Well, the opossum is named "Virginia", so it is only natural to use "she". As a comic in all seriousness, though, the usage here did confuse me because I thought the implication was that only female opossums exhibited this behavior. Better style would have been to use "it" and not wade into the scrum around which pronoun to use when human gender is indefinite.