Friday – Home Invasion

[ninanevermore]

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about home invader Jeff and I threw in the back of his pickup truck and dropped off in the woods yesterday evening. It's alarming to discover that someone has taken up residence in your garage without asking. Especially when they are the sort to go through your garbage and leave the place spelling like urine.

The saga began last week when Jeff announced: "We have a possum* living in our garage."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Because I saw it. It's a baby one."

"Awwww. What do you want to do about it?"

"There's a guy at work who has a trap he said I can borrow."

"Cool. Why does he have a trap?"

"Let's put it this way, we call him Roadkill Robert. He lives in the woods and eats whatever he finds out there."

I just looked at my husband.

"I'm not kidding."

"You aren't going to give him our possum, are you?"

"No, I'm going to let it go somewhere that's not here."

"Well, until then, he's part of the household," I said, "Let's name him Eddie."

Yesterday morning, I went in the garage and found this note on top of the cage:




It seems Eddie is a girl.


A very small girl; she was too light to trip the trap, and the first few nights happily ate all the hotdogs (being so young, healthy food didn't interest her much) we put in it without triggering the door to close. Jeff had to rig it with a string and lay in wait until he saw her go inside, and then pulling the string to manually shut the door and capture her. She couldn't have weighed more than a few ounces.




She tried looking sad.


She tried hissing like a cat and growling, too.


As much as she didn't like being imprisoned, she didn't seem to mind the food.


"Tell me you gave her the Oscar Meyer and not the Hebrew Nation hotdogs," I said, "Those things are expensive."

"The Kosher ones were all I could find."

"Now she's never going to want to leave," I told him.

When we took her to the woods, the place where a possum should feel most at home, we almost couldn't get her to leave the cage. I think, in the back of her little marsupial mind, she knew that there would be no more high-end frankfurters just laying around. She would be back to eating the grubs and June bugs that her mother had raised her on. Poor thing.





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*technically what we have is a Virginia Opossum, but no one ever pronounces that O.

Comments

[mercurygrrl.livejournal.com]

Can I keep it?

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

If she turns up again, I'll send her to you. I've got to warn you that she's going to get a lot bigger, though.

[mercurygrrl.livejournal.com]

That's the "problem" with all cute things, kittens, possums, kids...

[1smart1.livejournal.com]

I'll send you my kid! He's still kinda cute. But he does have his moments - and I'm pretty certain he's not rabid, but don't quote me on that.

[http://users.livejournal.com/batty_/]

OMG splodeycute. :JKGHDSGHD"LSjgdsk;jgf

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

She was pretty cute, in a "keep in mind that I can turn your fingers into so much raw hamburger meat" kind of way. :D

[mersipan.livejournal.com]

I know possums have all sorts of diseases and things...but man, she's a cutie!!

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

For now. The adults aren't so charming.

[serene-orange.livejournal.com]

We have the occasional possum wander into our back yard to eat the squirrel feed. They are just so damn cute.!!!

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I think so, too, at least when they aren't hissing and showing their mouthfuls of needle sharp teeth.

[serene-orange.livejournal.com]

we had a baby on the back porch. My sister went outside and the baby hissed at her . When Karen giggled at him, he tipped over and closed his eyes. Only when Karen was back inside, did he peep one eye open, make sure she was gone, then scurried off.

[1smart1.livejournal.com]

When the name changed to Edwina, I was afraid you were going to tell us she'd had a litter of babes in your garage. So now it begs the question - how did Jeff know? What kind of scrutiny was necessary to determine that it was not an Eddie?

And aren't possums supposed to have tails? What happened to poor E?

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

1) No testicles or discernible boy parts that we could find. We could be wrong.

2) She has a tail, it's just hairless and understated. You can see it in a couple of the photos above if you look closely, or here is a more all-inclusive shot of her: (http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d161/neanah_e/Nature/?action=view&current=DSC01221.jpg)

We just weren't focusing the camera on her back end too much. :)

[uawildcatgrl.livejournal.com]

So cute! I hope her mommy isn't still around your place looking for her!

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

She's too big to ride around on her mother's back with her siblings any more, so I think she's recently set out on her own. She's not so much a baby as an adolescent.

[uawildcatgrl.livejournal.com]

Shows how much I know!

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

They are marsupials. They start off riding around in their mothers pouch, and then spend a few weeks riding around on her back. This one is about the size of a chipmunk, but she's going to end up about the size of a racoon.

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

She's so cute! :D

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

But very wild and with very sharp teeth...

[anne-nahm.livejournal.com]

Sure are cute when they are little. Notsomuch when they are adults. Those things are big, hiss, and aren't afraid of me and my broomstick! ICk!

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

For a large dog, they'll roll over and pretend to be dead. But they look at a big silly-looking creature like a human being and decide, "Hey, I can take this one, no problem." They look like they have about a thousand teeth in their mouths. o_O

[adamantplatypus.livejournal.com]

They eat garbage, I can't imagine she'd have a problem with anything you gave her. :D

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I think something that eats garbage would have been happy with Oscar Meyer; now she's had the good stuff, and it's probably spoiled her.

[broken-alice.livejournal.com]

Adorable! I know a man and woman that hand raised an abandonded possum and kept her as a pet. The possum passed away several years ago and they both got tattoos of her.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

This one seemed a little too old and a little too wild to consider keeping. She made it very clear that she didn't want to be touched.

[l-l-u-w-d.livejournal.com]

Well, your experience with an oppossum in the relative confines of your house were a lot more pleasant and not so traumatic as mine! LOL I ended up having to call animal control to get rid of the one that had taken up residence in my bathroom vanity drawer after a hurricane!

And, whatever happened to 'possums playing 'possum' when threatened or frightened. That sure doesn't happen, in my realm of experience.

I have an LJ post somewhere about my encounter...

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

For my Dad's 60 pound dog, they used to roll over and play dead. Apparently they can tell by looking at us (no sharp teeth, no fur to protect our skin) they we are not as threatening as a dog. I've never had them show me any respect, either.

This one was still the size of a small kitten, though. She was a lot more charming than a grown possum.

[l-l-u-w-d.livejournal.com]

The one I had snarled and hissed harder and more when I bopped it 'side the head with a toilet plunger. Twice. LOL It was all I had to work with, since it had me trapped in my own bathroom.

[stratkitten.livejournal.com]

Awww...at a sleep-away camp I went to in 8th grade there was a domesticated possum (it had been hand-reared after having been abandoned while its eyes were still closed). It got out of its cage one night and at dinner, I looked down and see these big eyes and a pink, pointy nose looking up at me like "You know you want to give me your tablescraps..." Her name was Blossom and she was quite friendly :-)

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I can believe it would be possible to tame on if it were hand raised from infancy, and it that particular animal were naturally inclined to sweetness. I'm afraid my little one, while young, was raised as a wild possum by her wild possum mother, and not very inclined to being anything but wild. The only thing she seemed to like about domestication was the hot dogs.

[basketcaselady.livejournal.com]

Where's the mama? I'm betting she's also living in your garage. She can't be too far.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I think little Edwina was already out on her own. She was in the garage about a week before we managed to catch her, and we never saw her mother or any litter mates. She has a mouth full of teeth, so she's weaned. While she is far from her adult size, I think she is of sufficient maturity that her mother is no longer keeping an eye on her survival.

My 3 year old believes, however, that she went in the wood "to find her mommy and daddy so she can live with her family," and I'm not going to correct him on her solitary status in life.

[manicmandi.livejournal.com]

I had the EXACT same problem...only, it WASN'T a 'possum but, an actual homeless guy!! One day I came home and noticed the door to my garage was slightly ajar and a bunch of clothes hanging up in it. I went to investigate only to find there was a guy in there! I was like "dude! you CANNOT live here!! I'm sure there is some sort of law saying people can't LIVE in my garage being as its not an apartment so you have to leave since I don't want any fines." He left but I was afraid he was gonna burn my house down or something cause I made him leave.
There was a 'possum in my front yard the other day and tried to make him go back under my house or wherever he lives because I didn't want someone walking by with a dog and the dog attack him. Also, I wasn't crazy about him getting smushed by a passing car because they're not too quick to get out of the way.
I was thinking about the age of your 'possum and the fact that perhaps, if it WAS a boy, maybe just his testes hadn't descended? Just a thought lol

[manicmandi.livejournal.com]

Oh I forgot to finish my story about what happened with my 'possum in the yard lol. I hit him (gently) with a rolled up news paper and he thought he'd kill me but I'm faster haha. He growled, hissed and snarled but it didn't scare me. I just thought it was hours of endless entertainment hahaha.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I'd rather have a possum in my garage any day. They don't smell as bad and they are less prone to arson. :P

[manicmandi.livejournal.com]

Ya, me too. I'm not cool with homeless people living in my personal space. They're ok on the corner where I give them money now and then but, definitely not ok in my garage. I think I have some "furry friends" living in my garage but I try not to think about it cause they're NOT the cute cuddly type like 'possums.... if you can imagine.