One more possum story for the road

El Cabrero has recently sworn to stop blogging about possums, at least until the Annual Thanksgiving Possum Recipe edition. In fact, one reader suggested I move on to another topic, such as racoons.

However, a friend just sent me another compelling possum story which I feel obligated to share here. I am nonetheless pleased to say that the story also contains a reference to a raccoon. I'm hoping this will keep everyone happy.

Here's the possum/raccoon story:

When in college I had close encounter of the opossum variety. I was living in a really rundown house in Austin Texas, where one of my housemates was always complaining that a possum was stealing her cat's food. One cold  - well, moderately cool (this is Austin we're talking about) - winter night I went to sleep in my loft only to be awoken by a thump and a furiously scratchy/scrambling sound. A possum had crawled under a rotted eave apparently seeking a warm place to nap, and had fallen through a weak place in the sheet-rock of my ceiling.

I turned on a light and put on my pants. Then with a bit of wary maneuvering I approached Pogo with an emptied trashcan.

"Hiss!" said the possum.

"Hey, give me a break," said I. "I've got classes in the morning."

After what seemed to me to be an entirely unreasonable amount of marsupial teeth-baring and threatening (which probably seemed completely justified to the other party) I managed to get my uninvited guest trapped and moved to a table in the living-room. The next morning we called animal control, but all had to leave (since we did actually have classes) before they came. We left the door open and a note on the overturned trashcan prominently sitting on our livingroom table.

I don 't know exactly what happened to the possum, but the catfood stopped disappearing.

That house was in the city, but it was still regularly visited by animals, many of the more-than-two-legged type. I remember once going outside to put compost on our compost pile, only to find myself in a stare-off with an entirely unrepentant raccoon, who was sitting on the pile with a cantaloup peel in it's very human looking paw.

I could have sworn I heard the bandit say "what? You threw it out."

There you have it.

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE SAFETY NET here.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED