On a morning in October (again, I didn't keep track of the day) I was busily getting the boys partially fed and clothed so I could get Brady off to the bus stop. We never get up early enough, and it is always hectic. The three of us raced out the door and up to the bus stop but Taylor, the neighbor boy wasn't waiting for us. This sent me into a bit of a panic... I never know if we are early, if we missed the bus, or if the bus is just running late. After waiting a bit I figured we must have missed it and all three of us ran back home so I could get the keys. Normally we kennel Bentley when we are away but since I wanted to get Brady to school as soon as possible so that he could eat breakfast there, which he loves, I left Bentley free.
After successfully getting Brady to school and off to the cafeteria for breakfast, I decided to swing through the Starbucks drive-through with Bryse. With treats in hand, we entered the house to find an extremely excited Bull-pug pacing the length of the couch, nose to the floor underneath the couch, and tail wagging madly. My first thought was that there must be a mouse under our couch. (When we first moved into this house our cat killed a mouse under our bed. Gross!)
So I began the process of cleaning up all the kids toys on the floor and pulling away the ottoman. I told Bryse to wait in the kitchen and began pulling the couch away from the wall. Bentley immediately ran back there and as I continued to pull the couch away, I came across a pretty horrific site... there was indeed an animal under the couch, it just wasn't a mouse... It was a opossum.
I completely panicked, grabbed Bryse and managed to get us and the dog out the backdoor. Luckily I had my phone so I called Bill. No answer. I tried a few more times. No answer. Then I called my mom. No answer. I didn't know what to do... I walked around the house, trying to figure out how I was going to get it out of the house and what I was going to do with Bryse in the meantime. It was chilly out and Bryse was telling me he was cold and wouldn't you know it, I didn't have the keys to the car. I walked across the street to the neighbor's house and knocked but no one came to the door so I went back to the front porch with Bryse in my arms and the two of us peered through the window, trying to figure out what the opossum was doing and how I was going to get him out from under the couch. I recalled Bill and my mom and this time my mom answered. I told her the situation and she asked she said she would come over. Just after we got off the phone, the neighbor whose door I had knocked on, came out of the house looking like he was headed somewhere. I approached him, asked if he was going somewhere, and then spilled my story. He's such a nice guy, he headed right into his garage to get some supplies even though he had been heading out to take his car into the shop.
A few minutes later he arrived with an old heavy Carhart coat and some heavy-duty work gloves and in the three of us headed. He told me to put Bryse on the dining room table and had me pull out the couch so he could grab the opossum in the coat. Once he had it, he raced out to the front yard and dumped the opossum out. With my phone in hand, I was able to snap a couple of pictures.
This first picture is of the opossum when he first dumped it out of the coat.
In this next one, the opossum played dead. So gross and realistic looking. It hung it's tongue out. So weird.
Then I guess he decided the coast was clear and took off for the bushes.
I am so grateful for helpful neighbors. And because the opossum was a baby. It's fur look clean and soft and not all mangy and gross.
And I suppose I should explain, we have a cat door between that leads from our garage to our house and had fallen into the bad habit of leaving the outside garage door open so that the cat could go in and out. I also found that the opossum had eaten the whole sack of cat food. :)
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