Liveass Possum Chasin'

I was settling in for bed to try to get a good night’s sleep in preparation for what I’m sure will be a long day at the Capitol, when I hear my roomie Anne’s voice from the living room.

“Sara! There’s a po-[something something very high pitched squealing] in the living room!!!” Huh? There’s police in the living room? I headed out towards her to see what was going on.

I saw I immediately: a liveass possum scurrying about in my living room. Holy God.

I’ve always seen possums in my yard; I’ve even given them cute names, like Blossom the Possum and her son, Awesome the Possum. This liveass, cat-sized, ghost-faced possum in my living room, however- not awesome.

After a couple minutes of squealing and carrying on – in which time the possum got itself nestled all snug-like up against the wall under a table – we started strategizing.

We considered the cat, then he waltzed in the house and right past the possum without batting an eyelash. We deemed him fired for failing to protect us from the beast and must now be locked in the craft room as a pre-emptive measure. I then called and text messaged the boy, aka the many-home-owner-landlord-type to see what suggestions he would have. No answer from him- he too is fired. This situation was clearly being left up to us girls.

Now I’ve had birds in the house that I’ve had to chase out, and the cat has brought in tiny garter snakes in that I yanked from his teeth and tossed out the door—but this was a whole different universe.

We started by opening the front door, the side door, and the back door. We decided to hurl a couple paperbacks (The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Caramelo) underneath the table to try to startle him out. Nothing. It appeared…dead. Oh yeah. Possums play dead. Hmm. Perhaps we should shove it out towards the open front door with something with a long handle.

Armed with a broom and a mop respectively, Anne and I screamed a bit more and proceeded to try to push the possum out. Of course we should have known it wouldn’t be that easy when it instead ran further into the house and hid behind a couch. Pardon my language but fucking HELL. You would be cursing too if you had a liveass possum sliding around on your hardwoods.

So then we decided to create a barrier-wall out of the furniture to try to guide it out the front door. We again persuaded it to move with the broom- out the door it did not go. It ran further back into the house and straight into my bedroom and under my bed. Oh it is ON.

I am SO not having any liveass possum sharing pillow talk tonight. Oh HELL no.

That’s when she came out, emerged from my soul, my chest: Possum Warrior Princess. Armed only with a broom and a tenacity to purge her lair of all things giant and rodent-like, I ran, chasing that little bastard from one corner to another back and forth in my room until it ran out the door. My heart was pounding and I felt the wheezing coming on- Warrior Princesses sometimes have asthma afflictions, unfortunately.

After emerging from my room, the possum nestled itself back behind the couch. Now Anne and I were wise to its tactics so we had a better idea of strategy: I would push it out from the couch and based on our now wealth of possum-behavioral-experience, we knew that it would likely run toward the back of the house where Anne would guide it out the door with the mop.

What really happened is that I pushed the possum from out of the couch, it ran towards Anne who screamed. So I screamed. And then we both screamed and started running after it shaking our weapons in the air. And we chased that little fucker straight out of the back door!

High fives, hugs and giggles were abundant. We sat at the dining room table and caught our breath and thought that perhaps a couple shots of liquor might help to settle the nerves for sleep. We did it- with no help from anyone!

We are Badass Possum Warrior Princesses and succeeded in protecting our home from being ravaged by the string-tailed, small-dog sized, creepy as hell invader.

Here are the Lessons learned from the Great Possum Invasion of 2008:

Close all internal doors, especially bedroom doors, before starting the hunt;

Hurl heavier books than politically right on / magically real paperbacks, something that might actually make an impression on something pretending to be dead – try an unabridged dictionary;

And finally, I am simply too damn old for liveass possum chasing.