An Evening Visitor

The dog started barking upstairs and that typically means a cat in our driveway. Doesn’t matter if it’s our cat or someone else’s cat, as far as the dog is concerned it’s trespassing. An offense punishable by barking the interloper to death.

This happens just about every evening and as I said, it’s usually a cat. So when she started doing it last night, I asked the lass to get her (the dog) to knock it off. The lass, curiosity clearly getting the better of her, decided to check out what the dog was fussing about.

She comes up to me, eyes wide and with a little concern in her voice, “Dad, it’s not a cat.” Right then, I’m thinking “We need a bigger boat…”

She continues “It’s about this big…” and she holds her hand about a foot apart. My next thought is “Well, scratch the bigger boat.” The size means it could be just about anything. She’s smart enough to know what a cat looks like, so I need another detail to have any hope of coming to a conclusion.

She finishes “… and it’s grey and has a pink tail.”

Ahh, well, round these here parts there’s really only 1 thing it could be. I hopped up off the couch and went to the window and sure enough, the possum was waddling across our driveway. By this point, the dog had come downstairs, clearly hoping we would unleash her upon the poor creature. Our younger male dog had picked up on her agitation and was similarly inclined. I imagine his thoughts were along the lines “Got no idea what’s going on, but I’m IN.”

As soon as I stepped outside, it scooted into the brush. The tree it went to is dead and it was only a foot or so off the ground when the lass and I tracked it down. It barely moved even after I went inside to get the camera. The lass was impressed by it’s lack of movement and kept asking why it didn’t move much. I tried to explain that’s it’s defense mechanism, to sit there and be still, hopinig we’d leave it alone.

Aside from taking the pictures, we obliged.