The Possum

I just found out that I have an opossum (North American: "possum") living in my back yard.

He (or she) snuck in to eat the cat food in the bowl by the back door the other night as I was reading in my comfy chair in the kitchen.

I heard a crunching sound, and assumed that it was one of my cats (more later on them) snarfing down food. To my surprise, it was a cat-sized critter, with snaggly grey and black fur, a pink face, a long naked pink tail, and so on. Definitely not one of my cats.

I think I was more startled than scared, when I looked down and saw the Possum, not two feet from MY feet, snarfing cat food. I reacted with an audible intake of breath (what's the opposite of a sigh?) and scared the Possum (one of the most scaredy-cat/possum aminals), who ran out the door.

Surprisingly, twenty minutes later, it came back inside, checking if the coast was clear. Upon seeing me, still in my chair, I guess it figured that the coast was definitely NOT clear, and ran away again.

Later, I researched opossums on the net, and found out that they don't carry rabies, but they do carry fleas and ticks. Also, they consume almost anything, including "roof rats" (whatever they are), cockroaches, ants, decaying fruit (they especially like persimmons), and so on. So now I have a fourth "cat" named "Possie".

Oh, well.