Laird of the Opossum and the Mouse

I am not a city boy, but neither am I super excited about living in the country.

I’ve grown up with fireflies and mosquitoes, bullfrogs and catfish, the occasional slipping-slide (made out of visqueen and dawn not some fancy Walmart toy) and always always always squeezing aloe vera grown in the front yard on my cousins sun burned backs hoping they’d return the favor.

Of late, I’ve often wondered if my life is a Disney story in which I (apparently) am the princess small wooden creatures come to visit (wish they’d pick up the broom once and a while).

I have two large breed dogs.  A Great Dane and a Mastiff.  They are both over 120 lbs and still scared of the dark, loud noises, and bugs to boot.

A while back I’m lying on the couch with my giant baby’s curled next to me on the floor shivering due to the thunderstorm we were currently experiencing outside.

Since I live in the middle of almost 12 acres of pretty dense woods, every time it rains for more than an hour, my home becomes refuge for little field mice (who are adorable btw but super pesky).

On this particular instance, a little half drowned fella runs across my living room floor to scamper under the loveseat across the room.

What do my giant vicious protectors do?

Well they proceed to jump up on the couch I’m on and look at me like I’m the one who’s supposed to protect them from the scary intruder.  Oh yes, I feel very safe at night knowing that all a burglar has to do make scary noises and my dogs will leave me high and dry in the protection department.

Fast forward in time a little.   I go to feed my dogs one morning. They have their own room in my house with a huge doggie door for their in-and-out all day long enjoyment.  I peek my head through their window (yes, I cut a hole in my wall  so they could have a window to look into my living room and watch me watch TV) and it looks like a Quentin Tarantino movie; blood everywhere.

My Mastiff decided to try and make friends with an opossum and failed by shredding the poor guy to pieces.  ICK!

I whisk them both out of my house and up to my parents to give them a good hosing down … because they were gross and my mom has an outdoor walk-in shower I can easily bath them in.

I come back to my house (having left puppies at moms) to deal with the corpse in my house.  As I try and scoop it up with a shovel, it decides to not be dead anymore, and like the macho man I’ve claimed to be this entire post…I ran like there was no tomorrow to go bathe my babies once more.

I know what you’re thinking … “um dude, you just left a bloody possum in your house unattended.”  well, yes I did.  I was hoping that with me and the dogs out of the house it would make his way back out the dog door and into the wild once more.

To my pleasure, when I got back from bath #2 there was no possum in my doggie room, so I cleaned up the murder scene and brought the dogs back home.

Now it’s 2:00 something in the AM and I’m blissfully unaware of life going on around me when nature calls and I need to get up to take care of some business.

I reach out and turn on the light and not two feet from my face, lying in a pile of now dirty towels (yes I keep my towels in a heap next to my bed, don’t judge me) is my opossum pal.

Just chillin there like we do this all the time.  I fly out of bed, because, come on, there’s a possum in my room, and run for the shovel.

I’m not a cruel guy, so I’m dreading beating this guy to death, when a thought occurs to me… He’s only like 15 ft. from the back door, maybe I can shoo him out.

I grab a large walking stick I keep for hiking purposes in one hand and the shovel in the other and proceed to poke, shuffle, shovel, scoot, and prod the hissing nightmare beast out and onto my back porch.

For all intents and purposes, my story ends here.

My dogs, clean.

The opossum,safe.

And me, frazzled and in need to new towels.

Thanks for reading,

Kurby