I haven’t been here for awhile. Christmas duties have taken up just about all of my time. Decorating, baking cookies (14 types), shopping, wrapping presents—you know the usual madness for this time of year. Things have finally settled down, and I was looking forward to a normal day today, BUT there are other forces in the universe that have their own ideas.
I was sound asleep when around 3:00am, I heard what sounded like a bunch of gunshots in the distance. Living in the woods, like we do, this isn’t all that unusual, except the time of morning was odd. I was just about to drift off to sleep again, when I heard one of my dogs going ballistic, barking her head off outside, on the other side of the wall my head was against.
Well, I couldn’t let her wake the neighborhood, so I jumped out of bed, threw on a pair of pants and boots, grabbed a flashlight to investigate. Both dogs were going nuts! There was something on the other side of the wall of my house that they were trying to get. The something was not too keen on letting them achieve their goal, and was growling non-stop at the dogs.
Euclid, the barking fool.
Since this was the wall of my room, I ran back inside to see if the something was in the room. It wasn’t. It was between the walls. Then it hit me. Where is Dreyfuss (my pet possum)? Was she still in her pen, that I keep her in at night? Nope, she had made a break for it, and gotten into the wall!
OK, mystery solved. So, I went outside got the dogs chained up next to their houses, to keep them from, 1. messing up the exterior wall and B. let the possum calm down and come out. Then, I set up camp were I discovered she had gone into the wall. I baited the area with her favorite treat, cheesy poofs, and waited, curled up in a blanket on the freezing cold concrete floor.
Finally at 7:45am, she came out, still completely freaked out, still growling. Poor little girl, I managed to grab her (wearing leather gauntlets, she tried to nip me) and got her back to her pen. As soon as her feet hit her home turf, she was her sweet docile self again.
Both she and I spent a portion of today catching up on missing sleep. I also reinforced her pen so that it won’t happen again.
Maybe tomorrow will be normal.
The possum who caused it all.
