Opposums

I’ve  done a lot of  story telling. That began in the classroom and particularly  in the latter years and  a two hour combined history/English class called Humanities with my teaching partner Fran. Then when we both moved to the middle school hoping to do something similar I was able to trash the typically awful history textbooks and we focused on blending in reading  stories, mostly historical fiction. So here's my story for today, it's titled THE TRIBE OF MARAUDING POSSUMS.

Just finishing Caesar's the Gallic wars, the English version, I realized that the first sentence pretty much covered it all. I came, I saw, I conquered. Little did I realize that my former student and now cleaning lady, Stacy Lex Tart would involve me in a tribal war as well. She had turned the vacuum cleaner off as the canister was filled with our German Shepherds dog hair. Also known as a G. S. D. According to my wife, those initials stood for German Shedding Dog. Stacy was telling me about a very elderly friend of hers, who lived in a trailer home but had been sleeping for weeks with Stacy and her husband. Why is that? I asked. It was because a bunch of opossums had invaded her trailer home home, especially at night destroying things in her kitchen and even building a nest in her bathtub. Needless to say she was very frightened. I urged Stacy to investigate the problem further and if she found where they were hiding out they would be easy to dispatch. Meaning they’d be playing possum and easy to whack over the head with a baseball bat or something similar.  Looking very appalled it turned out my former student was a pacifist at heart. 

It became quickly apparent that having put my pheasant and goose hunting days behind me was not sufficient enough excuse for avoiding the job. I was trapped.  And being trapped reminded me that my dairy farmer friend Steve had given me a spare live trap he had used to eliminate some raccoons tearing up feed bags in his barn.  Perfect!

Thus the next morning Sir Ramond du Lancelot ventured forth to rescue the elderly fair maiden in her small castle. Leaving Princess Stacy to arm the device with cat food  our intrepid hero we outside to look for signs of the intruders. Aha! A trail led to a den in a wood pile and from there to the dryer vent into the castle. A patch of screen was used to secure the entryway. The culprits were either trapped inside or kept out.

Afterword:  The next morning Stacy reported one tropped and released followed by two more.  Neighbors began showing up and wanting to borrow my trap. Apparantely they were common throughout the area. I suggested that the bird feeders were the likely attraction.  Eventually I got my trap back….