Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuz a YIKES!

Okay, I know this is ridiculous, since I have articles that are about to be due, but the funniest thing happened to me, last night. For a little background, I will explain that I live in an area that qualifies as "the boonies." We are out of the city limits, but we found a house with a lot of space, a huge yard, and a lot of features. It was also a steal, since it was being sold by the bank that repossessed it at only a little over half of its assessment value. Being poor, having three children, and having lived in an 800 square foot house in a high-traffic area, we jumped at it.

Of course, there was work to be done, since it had sat empty for six months. There were rodents to remove, tons of cleaning and painting, the moving, itself. I will admit, I bought the humane mouse traps. The snap traps freak me out, and the sticky ones just really upset me. Unfortunately, these mice were too smart for the humane ones. My husband got the snap traps. No dice.

One evening, I was dreaming, and all I really remember is dreaming that there was a bat in my hair because I could hear it squeaking. Finally, it penetrated that the squeaking was real, and there was something in my hair. I came awake screaming, scaring the crap out of my husband, who bravely batted at the hair over my ear, but the mouse had already run for its life. After that, sticky traps were fine with me. We eradicated the infestation, although, I still would not have anything to do with the traps.

Happily, other than a spider problem one year, we had no other incidents with mice. Since we had also put rat/mouse poison in the walls after the hair incident, we did not so much as hear a peep. Unfortunately, over the summer, I started worrying about the wildlife again when I came home to my daughter putting her head out the window screaming to me to help her and my mother-in-law get the lizard out of our den. It was a harmless, little brown lizard, but we had to chase it around the room, catch it under the broom. Nobody wanted to touch it (Hello, we're girls!), but my mother-in-law managed to get it into a bowl with a lid and throw it out. A few weeks later, there was another incident while I was on the phone with a close friend who laughed until he could not stand up over the hilarity of my daughter helping me to catch a lizard without either of us touching it. However, we were successful.

I should have listened to my forebodings because as soon as it started getting cold, we started noticing mice. We caught a couple with the humane ones, but unhappily had to start using the sticky ones again. We have caught legions, and I think there may still be more. Luckily, none have had the cojones to try to take nap in my hair this year, but I hate mouse poop, so we are doing our best with preventatives to keep down infestation and killing. What can I say, my conscience is insane.

I have a beagle-mix, Jaxon, who was found by a former coworker, and being the sucker that I am, I took him home with me. My husband pretends to not like him, but he is a loved and valued member of the family. Whoever had him before we did had trained him, housebroken him, and he is really protective of those whom he considers his. Even if he likes you, if he thinks you are going to hurt me or one of my children, he will bite and not stop until you back off. He walks my daughter to her bus stop on nice days, before he comes home. (We take her on nasty weather days.)

Another of the strange quirks of Jaxon is that he has to go into the bathroom with me. Whether I am taking a bath or taking care of business, he just gets really upset if I am in a room that he is not able to enter. Lately, I have noticed that he has been sniffing the corner of the bathtub and one of the cabinets, quite a bit, when we are in there. I thought it was probably a mouse.

Last night, as I as preparing for bed, once again Jaxon came into the bathroom with me. He did his sniffing routine, but instead of continuing to sniff, he slowly, stiffly backed away until he was right by me. He was between me and the cabinet, and he would not move or look at me when I spoke to him. That worried me. I no longer thought it was a mouse. With his protective behavior kicked in, I began to believe it might be a large rat.

Surprising myself by not running like hell, I slowly crept forward with the dog, and cracked open the cabinet door. I could see fur. Fur that was pretty, glossy and white with a few dark spots on it. OK. My first thought was, "Is is a rabbit?" It slowly looked up at me, and I saw that it was not a rabbit, it was a opossum. My first thought was not a word that I would print on Associated Content, but I was very proud of myself because I neither jumped, screamed or yelled the first work that came to mind. I quietly closed the door.

Although I was not raised in the country, I am from a small-town area, and I know that opossums can be vicious when provoked, and they can also carry rabies. If I tried to catch it, I would be making a lot of noise that would surely bring one or more of my children to investigate. I cannot imagine trying to hold one of them down for rabies shots. Also, with my super protective dog, there was a good possibility of him getting bitten, as well. I do not exactly want to get those shots, either. Of course, since I live out of the city limits, we have no animal control to call. Yeah. Exactly.

Instead of singing a string of curse-words, I decided to get something heavy and block that cabinet door, so the opossum would not get out of there and run amok in my house. The first thing I saw was the laundry basket in which my husband is storing his Cd's as he rips them to the computer, in order to clear my bookshelves for more books. (I'll get him some of those protective books in which to keep them when I can afford it. For now, I just want them out of my way.) I carried this heavy basket, blocked the door, threw my dog bodily from the room, then shut it and locked it from the outside.

My husband had left his cell phone at the house, since he is bad about remembering to charge it.Since I had already had him call me on his break from the work phone once to chew him out for not letting me know that we were out of dishwasher detergent or replacing it, himself, I did not want to call him at work again and risk getting him into trouble. I found the nearest spiral notebook and wrote a note about the situation, and I propped it up with the big tin of Nesquik that I have behind it while using a soda can to hold it up in the front. YOU COULD NOT MISS IT!

Of course, when the alarm went off at its usual evil time, this morning, I asked Mike if he had gotten my note. He muttered something about the dishes being done. I said, "Did you get my note?"

He said, "What note?"

I said, "The one about the opossum in the cabinet."

He muttered something incomprehensible. I poked him and repeated myself. He still did not get it. I finally repeated myself quite loudly and got his attention. He jumped up, and I explained the situation. This man, all six feet and 150 pounds of him, grabbed our decorative broadsword (it is real, but we just use it for decoration), and charged into the bathroom. I grabbed the dog, closed the bedroom door and waited. I was having nothing to do with that. The only reason it had not been shot the night before is that I did not have my .22 pistol. I have never shot one of the guns that we have, so I do not feel comfortable using them for home protection. Besides, the .22 would not have been so loud that I would have awakened all of my kids, and it would have done less damage to the new tile we installed over spring break, last year. This is why the broadsword was so handy.

Thankfully, the opossum was gone, although we just do not see where or how it got in. Everyone was ready on time, this morning, and I just had to share this story. I do not usually start the day laughing, so this was a welcome change, and since nobody (including the opossum) was hurt, I felt it was a happy tale to share for the holidays. I hope the holiday season is wonderful for yours.