Awesome Possum!

So, it would seem that I am driven to blog primarily about rodents. (Fine - rodents, mammals and marsupials, if you want to be completely accurate.) Just to recap, I've now blogged about field mice, squirrels and a raccoon - all of which met their untimely demises at the will of my car. Today I am forced to blog about another member of the rodent family; the opossum. To be specific, the Virginia Opossum. Thankfully this one is alive and well and currently hiding in our kitchen. Yes. That's right. Our kitchen. (Update: the possum has vacated the premises...details later in the post)

How did all of this begin? Well it all started when Roommate #1 inadvertently left the patio door in the basement open for several hours on Monday. Roommate #2 discovered this when she came home late that night and shut the door. The following morning Roommate #2, whose bedroom and bathroom are in the basement, found a little "gift" waiting for her on the bathroom floor. Say what you will, but at least the little critter had the decency to relieve himself on the bathroom floor and not the carpet. (We're all praying that there are no more little "gifts" waiting somewhere else! [shudder]) Roommate #2 was so disturbed by what she found that she wiped up the droppings and flushed them away. Understandably, R#2 was distressed and so she immediately contacted Animal Control to see if they could come and remove the animal - whatever it was. Unfortunately, Animal Control informed her that they would only dispatch someone if we had actually seen the animal. Sigh. R#2 and I searched the house (with broom in hand) from top to bottom and neither found nor roused anything, which only added to the frustration of the situation. This meant that because R#2 was the only one who had seen the droppings, she would have to use her super-sleuthing skills (thank you Google!) to figure out what kind of critter we actually had. Because she was at home that day, she gave me periodic updates and informed me that she thought it was either an opossum or a cat, but she seemed pretty sure that it was an opossum. Well, if it was, that would explain why we hadn't seen/heard anything in our searches because they're nocturnal and notorious for...well, "playing possum".

After returning from work, there were no new developments, so we decided to head off to institute and bother with it later. Later found R#2 and I in the living room at around 11PM both on our laptops and watching a bit of TV. Because this gave me the perfect sight line with the basement door, it was I who noticed movement and looked up just in time to see tiny black eyes peering from the delicate pointy-nosed face of a very small possum with a look of curiosity. My reaction? "R#2, R#2! Possum! Possum", spoken while pointing wildly toward where the little possum had just headed for the closed front door. Thankfully R#2 had her camera handy, so we got some good shots of the frightened little guy.













Let the games begin! The idea was to try and keep him corralled in the entryway, while we got the front door open and shooed him out with a broom or other such tool. Sadly, it didn't quite work out that way. As I slowly approached the possum to get him to the side of the door, so I could open it, he darted past me and behind the entertainment center in the living room. BLAST! So close! R#2 and I got down on our hands and knees and tried to find where he had gotten to, but couldn't immediately find him. He was a quick little guy and well, I already said it, but he was little. After moving as many objects on the floor that would provide hiding for him, R#2 lifted a blanket from a pile of other blankets and found this.

That's right folks. Have you heard that Snuggie is going for a new marketing scheme, focusing on a new and growing demographic? "Possums: the new spokescreatures for the Snuggie." (And yes, I own two Snuggies. What of it?) We succeeded in shooing Poss (he needs a name, okay?) back the way he had come, in hopes of getting him to head for the now open door. Unfortunately, because we hadn't thought to create barriers to other doorless openings, he instead, made a run for the kitchen. Sigh. We thought that wouldn't be such a big deal, because the kitchen is small and there aren't many places that he could hide, but rodents are clever and very squishy and he found a happy little crawl space between the bottom drawer and the floor. ARGH! This time we weren't going to fall for his shenanigans. We set up barriers using anything and everything we could find and then laid a trail of trail mix from his hidey-hole to the door. After that proved not as successful, I added some smelly bananas to the mix.

We retreated to the living room to wait him out and before long, we heard him happily munching on the bananas. We were not, however gifted with stealth and we had soon scared him back into his little hideaway. Great. Now he's fat and happy and has found a place to hang out indefinitely! What next?

After a few more times of him poking his little snout out and then running back to safety, we decided to back way off and just be patient. By this time it was nearing 2 AM and while I had been determined to stay until the job was done, I realized that I would be worthless today if I didn't get some sleep, so I went upstairs to get ready for bed. R#3 came down to keep R#2 company and to take her turn on "possum watch". By about 2:30AM I was in bed, but not yet asleep when I heard the front door close. I ran downstairs to see that the front door was, indeed, closed and when I asked whether Poss had acheived freedom I was met with R#2 & 3's joyous cries of triumph! Yes, he had found his way out of his hole and they shooed him the rest of the way. HOORAY! So it is official. We are finally possum-free.