possum problems

Tonight I drove home in flip flops after getting a pedicure. I hit the button to put the garage door up and saw two glowing eyes and a pointy long nose of one big possum eating cat food on top of our freezer. I honked the horn, attempting to scare him away, but instead he waddled over to the heated cat beds and made himself cozy and comfortable. The cats were up in the rafters.

I was paralyzed. This thing kept looking at me and I couldn't get out of the car. I basically had bare feet! And very vulnerable toes. So I called Rory who was inside watching tv. But he didn't pick up his phone. So I backed the car up (causing the possum to drop to the floor and hide under the kids' toys) and flashed my brights until Rory stuck his head out to see what I needed. I rolled down my window, "The possums back! He's under the trike."

Rory disappeared back into the house and I was certain he'd come back with a gun. He had been startled by the possum a few nights ago, digging in the cat food bag. But when he came back he didn't have a gun. Instead he yelled, "where's the SD card for the camera?" He spent some time taking pictures of the possum. (The picture above is the possum coming out from under a storage unit. I cropped it for you, kind readers, riding the possum of his tail, the sickest part. I like you too much to subject you to possum tail on my blog.) And then he proceeded to use my kitchen mop to try to move the possum out of the garage.

Gross.

But our garage has too many possible possum hiding places to make that plan go smoothly. So Rory moved his truck out to make more room to find this thing. Eventually he got it out of the garage and watched it waddle back into the woods until he comes back again tomorrow night.

I later commented to him that I was surprised he hadn't gotten his gun. He told me, "for that thing? He's harmless. A possum is just like a big docile rat, Becca."

Thank you, Rory. That is very comforting.