Happy Wednesday pootie, woozle, birdie and general critter lovers, and welcome. This is a diary to relax, share pictures and stories about our animal friends, and to build community. Come on in and join us.
Last weekend in the wee hours Kidlet comes to me and announces, "There's a creepy ugly animal in my bathroom!" Ick, I'm thinking. A rodent. So I look in her bathroom and find...well, nothing except some (sorry, but the truth must be spoken) poo on the floor that looks like it might be from a cat. Except that all our cats are very diligent about where they do their business. But rodents leave pellets rather than that kind of poo, so it must be something bigger. Yay.
Now deep inside I'm screeching and clambering onto the nearest table, but outside I'm trying to remain the calm maternal influence. Not sure I'm achieving anything that could remotely be called calm, but I do manage to call all the critter control numbers in the phone book. Eventually I get a call back from the farthest away one, who comes anyway and searches the house for quite a while, finding...well, nothing. Unfortunately, I had cleaned up the poo before he saw it, so he gives us this look like, "Uh huh. Sure." I pay him and he leaves.
Monday morning at one AM, I hear a noise under the head of my bed. Lovely. So, being the brave soul that I am I call my fiance (user trs here on DK) and exclaim, in a dramatic whisper, "It's under the bed." Like he's gonna come from Illinois and catch it or something. He asks me (have I got a credibility problem here?) "are you sure it isn't one of the cats?" I look around, trying not to let my feet actually touch the floor as I search, but find...well, nothing.
Seriously, trs. We are not imagining this. There was poo.
I try, failing miserably, to go back to sleep. Then about 4 AM I hear great scampering and consternation. I throw the light switch and see our youngest cat Kallie excitedly prancing around the armoire swatting under it with her paw. Cue sound of very unhappy unknown critter. I shoo Kallie out of the bedroom while simultaneously making loud noises to scare whatever's under the armoire. Which effort succeeds, because a hideous little adolescent opossum scampers out and hightails it in the direction of my bathroom.
I slam the bathroom door, stuff a towel in the crack beneath, lay a heavy shelf from the armoire on top of the towel and climb onto the bed with my feet safely off the floor. I, the mighty hunter, have trapped the ferocious opossum.
Having no mercy, after calling the animal control guy I again awaken trs to shriek, "there's a possum in my bathroom!" Kidlet and I keep close watch over the blockaded bathroom door, knocking on the wall whenever our new pet (Kidlet has by this time named it John) begins scratching at it. Around 6:30 the animal control guy arrives and we proudly show him how we've captured the mighty beast. He goes in, brave soul, armed only with gloves and comes out moments later carrying poor John by the tail to a waiting cage in his truck.
The animal control guy looks around and locates what he believes to be the entrance; we block it temporarily awaiting trs' arrival next week for a permanent fix. Then he goes merrily on his way, half my life savings in hand.
For the record, until Kallie encountered it face to face none of the cats (we have three) ever showed the least concern that there was an opossum in the house. Even stranger, trs shows every sign of still planning to move down here next weekend and marry me a few weeks later. Is he nuts, or what?
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