Playin Possum?

I'm sure most of you are aware of how much I LOVE those dah-ling marsupials...the beloved POSSUM. Well, we have had yet another possum adventure....

Occasionally Scout, my pup, has to go to the bathroom at an inconvenient time of the night. Because I am a ridiculously lite sleeper, all he has to do is stare at me until I wake up. He did this very thing this past weekend around 1:00am. Half asleep, I let him out and then half asleep again, I opened the door to let him back in about 30 minutes later. I happened to glance over at him walking into the TV room on my way back to bed and noticed he was carrying something in his mouth and dropping it on the carpet. I'm not sure how many dogs do this, but Scout actually buries rawhide bones that we buy him and digs them up later. This may seem innocent enough but after a rawhide bone sits in the earth for a while it gets quite disgusting and I do not allow them in our house. Seeing him drop an item on the carpet, I sleepily assumed it was another gross bone. I was less than thrilled to see that it was not a decaying rawhide, but a mauled possum!

The creepy varment was about a foot or so long and plopped on the carpet seeming to be dead. After some impressive shreaking, I frantically woke up Billy to get the animal OUT of the house. Billy came into the TV room in a more than half asleep daze, starred at the possum for a minute and walked back out and got a big empty Tide box and a paint stir stick. He stood over the possum for what seemed like a small eternity armed with the box in one hand and the stick held up like a sword in the other. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry nervously and I'm certain I made some crazy noises that combined those two feelings. When Billy bent down to try to put the Possum in the box the first time, the Possum moved his head a bit so we both knew it was actually "playing possum" and not dead. I think after that Billy realized the thing could get up and move somewhere a little less easy to capture and he proceeded to quickly scoop it into the Tide box with the stick. I think the whole thing at that point creeped him out and he taped the box shut with about 15 rounds of moving tape before he removed it from the house into the garbage can outside. Luckily, it was the weekend and our garbage is picked up Monday morning. After the ordeal I scrubbed and rinsed the carpet about 5 times. There are two extremely bright shiny circles in an otherwise very dirty carpet in our living room. Needless to say, I didn't sleep very well for the rest of that night. :)

We are at day 6 after our latest Possum episode and are in some ways STILL dealing with the chaos through Scout. He must have eaten some of the animal and suffered from it from both ends. After a full day of dealing with THAT, Scout was able to clear a room for a few days with a TOXIC aftermath and then unfortunately got an irritated bottom that needed to be looked at by the vet. Per the vet he will be fine after this "runs its course". Hopefully this will be the LAST possum story for the Saids.