Out of Pod Experience

he's cute, and has the curiosity of a kitten... a 130 lb kitten that pulls like a freight train and has a head like a bowling ball.

anyway. it's 2 am and i finish watching this spoiler video of Halo 4's cutscenes when I notice Jeremy is barking, and I think I heard him bark an hour ago, but I'm not sure. then he barks again (dammit) in his way that makes him sound like Jabba's Rancor (Jeremy! shh, the neighbors!) I go outside to see what the problem is and

it's a possum. possums like to walk along fences and walls, are similar in size to house cats...(lol) but unlike cats, they walk slowly (LOLZ! pwnz0r!). possums are nocturnal and nomadic (or whatever it's called when animals wander)... sounds normal for critters that live in the city. fine.

but Jeremy never sleeps. it's more of an idle. there was one time I caught him groggy from a deep sleep, but that's it. he also jumps high enough to see over our wall and catch anything on it.

so pretty much any time possums pass this house, they lose one of their family to Jabba's Rancor in the dark. and they're nomadic, so they have no idea who Jeremy is, and that he lives here. It's like random killmails from POS guns, and every month I find a possum wreck. but this one is alive, and hiding in a space between the wall and a pile of lumber. the space is too small for Jeremy's bowling ball of a head.

I'd rather not let him fight with a possum if I can help it. critters have sharp claws and dirty teeth, so while I enjoy opportunities to see Jeremy in beast mode, this is not one of those times. zombies, yes maybe but anyway the neighbors! I bring Jeremy inside to keep him occupied with his treat: a half pound of chicken breast. I have one of those circulating convection broilers and it fills the kitchen with the smell of chicken. Jeremy is sitting as hard as he can sit ("he's already sitting,he can't sit any farther!")

now one of my roommates is awake, so we try to hose the possum out. drown it, even. it's just like "you're giving me a bath?!" (I know the 'bath' look, it was totally that look). "maybe we should wait it out." we go back inside the house, and I feed Jeremy his chicken. all I can think of is Iraq, and the cat control problem at our outpost. animals bring disease. as a medic sergeant, I had my Soldiers bait the cats with tuna from our MREs, and tranquilize them with morphine. (war is rough. many kittens were lost)

but we don't have anything to anesthetize animals wi--"alcohol? what about squirting alcohol in its mouth while it's hissing at us?" it's a joke, but also all I've got. my roommate was already googling possums. he reads aloud: "common remedies to possums are... trap them, drown them, shoot them, or leave them alone. ...they will hide for hours. ...this person posted: 'introduce them to your rottweiler.'"

but we've done all that except shoot it, and I would rather not because I'm tired of walking to the end of the block with a possum carcass on a shovel. our plan is open one of the gates and chase it out of the yard.

we pry it out with a pole. thing is, we missed the part on the website that said possums are slow, so we're expecting it to flee like a cat... but here it is all slowpoke, so I figured Jeremy hurt him a bit which was disappointing because dead possum=walktotheendoftheblockwithapossumcarcassonashovel. it's staring at our flashlights with its soul-less eyes like Desmond's vision in Assassin's Creed and it creeped me out, so I was like NOPE and I shot at it with a pellet gun. it was -so- loud. (something about a possum-rottweiler-police-shooting-tazer-arrest am I imagining things?)

the possum drops, and it's not moving. *sigh* i get the shovel, and walk it down the street... but not even two driveways later I'm just -over- the whole situation and I tip the shovel into some bushes and start back to the house. and i hear a noise. I turn, and the possum creeps out of the bushes all creepy, slowpoke, and UNDEAD! i was all like

i tell my roommate about the zombie possum... it's his pellet gun... he's like "ooooh did you load it?" and I'm like "I thought it was already loaded."

what had HAPPENED was. the gun went BANG, so it....

'Possums.
Just don't. 'Taint worth it.

Good story.
Would read again.
10/10

Nice story :)

Opossums are primitive. Like, they haven't evolved at all since they were raiding dinosaur egg nests. Apparently their nervous systems are so primitive that if they get startled they go into a coma. They're not playing possum, they're actually passed out dead to the world.

I had something similar where my sister's two shih tzus got on either end of a possum, barking and biting. OK, they were shih tzus, more like barking and pinching. The thing just fell over like dead. Shih tzus went to work on him, trying to maul him as best they could. Eventually they got bored and left him covered in dog drool. He sure did look like a dead varmint-- eyes half-closed, nasty mouth hanging open, no breathing motion. I gave him couple of pretty hard prods with a shovel to make sure. I had the hole ready to throw him into when he kind of drowsily woke up, shook himself, and ambled off. Poor guy, no doubt he had some pretty good shovel bruises.

Your local animal control might give you a trap for those guys. Just have a leave a deposit of 30 bucks or so. Catch them, drive them over to the rich side of town, and leave your 1%er fellow citizens a present.

Yeah my boy has been skunked 3 times now and the last time we saw a skunk he finally decided to steer clear of it. We also have porcupines in my neck of the woods and there is one in the area that is a little bigger than a cocker spaniel. I didn't think they got that big around here considering the last one I saw looked like it could fit in the palm of a hand.

My guy is a mouser and he does a good job, especially at this time of year. When it snows it forces the mice to the surface so he sits at the back door all night waiting for them to run by. If I catch him doing his dance I let him out as quickly as I can and he sprints off around the corner. 2 years ago he set a record with 84 mice in one week. We had a discussion about setting up a little mouse funeral pyre for that one.

Long answer: else there would have been no epic story to share on the forums.

Short answer: YOLO

Should've called and asked to use my 410, I'd totally have let you use it.

15 round extended magazine will handle all the undead possums in the world!

Provided that was the only one

Also this is super possum, there is no way you can outwit him!

She's been going off lately. Probably something bad was in a meal.

Damn you!
:: shakes fist ::

Beat me to it.