Evicting a possum.
Saturday, Gypsi was out in the back yard making a racket. This is nothing new - she is a nervous dog and barks A LOT. She barks at birds and squirrels and neighbors and kids and plastic bags stuck on the fence. But her pitch was raised and frantic - she sounded like she could go hoarse at any minute. Mick looked out the back window and saw her circling and digging at the brush pile. He called her and she ignored him, continuing that shrill yipping and trying to burrow under the brush pile. He speculated it was the rabbit that lives out back, and he went out to get the dog inside.
Mick came back in the house quickly, wide-eyed and startled. It wasn't a rabbit; it was a POSSUM in the brush pile.
I hate possums. When I was in college, I'd swerve to hit them in the trailer park, not caring the damage those ROUS (Rodents Of Unusual Size) would do to my little Mazda. I suppose Marsupials Of Unusual Size would be more appropriate, but who am I to split whiskers? I've been plagued by these giant marsupials everyplace I've ever lived. The trailer park possums were bad - there was a military vehicle junkyard next door where they mostly lived - but city possums are the worst. I used to live down the street from a cemetery where they'd grow freakishly large, undisturbed in their slumbers there. I had an apartment once where they'd meet on my tiny porch to conduct what I can only speculate was freaky deaky possum orgies. You can't unsee that kind of thing.
The announcement that one of these feral critters had taken up residence in the brush pile gave me full body shivers of revulsion. I jettisoned plans for an afternoon of baking bread and picking eggs, dressed for yard work and headed out back. We put Gypsi in her crate in the basement where she railed against her confines and continued to bark. I felt safer facing the possum with her out of the picture. My attitude has softened over the years and I really didn't want anyone to get hurt: canine, marsupial or human. The brush pile was an oft-delayed project - it was back there when I bought the house. I have a modest yard ringed by 40 foot tall maple trees - healthy trees, but they shed branches like crazy. The brush pile is where those stray branches get stacked... and stacked... and stacked, for nearly 10 years now. We looked over the pile and I could see the possum poking his nose out of the bottom. He was "playing dead" - mouth wide open showing all his teeth, perfectly still and emitting a faint foul odor. We started pulling branches off the top, breaking them into manageable pieces and stacking them tightly. We hoped the commotion would scare him off; it didn't. We continued to work, diminishing the brush pile inch by inch and getting closer to our unwelcome guest. I'd periodically lean over to peer in and make sure he was still there - when he'd see me, he'd recoil slightly and open his mouth even wider. I reacted in much the same way.
Finally, we got down to the layer of branches just covering him - we could see his gray-white fur through the remaining debris. He'd cowered further back into the pile but hadn't moved otherwise. Mick got a metal rake and carefully pulled the last branches off him but he still wouldn't budge. I got a shovel and scooped it under him. I lifted him up onto his feet and finally, he started to move. Dazed, he waddled around a little, then caught his bearings. I was still standing there with my shovel, ready to use it as a weapon if he went for either of us. He made a beeline for the chain link fence, climbed over it and slipped under my neighbor's wooden walkway. The previous owner kept extensive gorgeous gardens back there, and the raised wood walkway went between two beds. The new owner lets it all lay fallow, so it is desolate and weed-choked back there. I'd tell her about the possum, but I suspect neither my Vietnamese nor her English is up to it.
We let Gypsi out of her crate and into the backyard while Mick & I continued to work. She ran over to sniff the possum nest at the bottom of the brush pile. As it turned out, there was a large piece of curved wood that would have made a nice back wall - it looked like part of a very large limb. She stood in the middle, her whole body poised and trembling, one front paw up. She looked exactly like the hunting dog we suspect makes up her muddled ancestry. She sniffed and tracked exactly where he went over the fence, and even sniffed the shovel I used to scoop him up. She stood in the middle of the sticks, chest puffed out with a wide, broad stance. She looked like she was doing what she was made to do.