Possum Friend

In December, we were visited several times by a juvenile opossum.  

Joel left one night to run an errand and when he came back, we noticed the garage door wasn't shutting properly.  It was a little crooked and the tension was off enough that it would retract instead of shutting all the way.

We went to figure out the problem and saw this little guy hanging from where the cable winch was.

He was not too happy to see us.  I tried to prod him off with a long pole to no avail.

When we finally got a good look at the situation, we realized that the opossum couldn't get down even it if wanted to, because the cable that used to pull our garage door up was now wound loosely around its body and tail.  

The possum snarled when we got too close.  I may have googled whether possums are carriers of rabies before we did too much more with it.  Turns out, it is extremely rare for a possum to carry an active rabies virus.  Yes, this made us feel slightly more confident.

We tried to pull the cable off without getting close to the opossum but we didn't make much progress, so we decided a call to animal control was in order.

Animal Control sent out a random dispatch officer.  While we waited, Joel and I decided to try again to free the opossum (with almost literally a ten-foot pole).  We un-looped its body from the cables successfully, and then instead of prodding, we pushed and pushed and almost whacked that possum until it finally tumbled off.

I shrieked (I never shriek) as the opossum came tumbling down to where I was.  The best part is that I shrieked just as the dispatch officer pulled into our driveway.

He helped us search for the possum (who had sought refuge under our lawn mower) and shoo it out.

His parting advice to us was to leave our garage door shut so critters couldn't come in.  Thank you, dispatch officer.

Because we didn't have the tools or the know-how to fix our now off-track cable, we had to call a garage expert.  Over a hundred dollars later, we had a fixed door and a diagnosis:  a baseball bat fell behind the cable track, got pulled up with the cable, and knocked the cable off its track when the bat hit the top.  

Well, that is what he said happened.  All I can say is that the opossum chose a very coincidental time to make a haven of our garage door.

We thought the opossum was scared well enough to avoid our house, but it kept showing up--ambling across our back deck, creeping in the side yard, hanging out on our front porch.

I saw a few opossums smeared across the road over the next few weeks and gave a mental fist-pump every time I did. 

I have never taken pleasure in dead animals before.  But I was sure creeped out about a skittery opossum invading our space.

We haven't had any other critters visit since December, and I am not anxious to meet any more.  I think five kids causes enough pitter-pattering around here.