February Opossum |
Our yard seems to have become the playground of opossums. These aren’t small, little spindly opossums. They’re the size of frickin beavers! Or a good size medium dog.
Back in February, Tobi chased one up the fence and proceed to dangle a few feet in the air while hanging onto it’s tail. With the help of our neighbor, we manged to catch it and get it in a cage. What followed next turned into the weirdest two hours of our lives.
We waited for over an hour for Animal Control to show up, and all we got was an overtired cop in a cop car. At looking at it and determining that yes, it was indeed a opossum (duh!) and no, he couldn’t put it in the back seat of the police car since the cage didn’t close (we were holding it in there with some rope and a large PVC pipe), he left to go get the Animal Control truck. He shows back up thirty minutes later still in his police car, proclaims that he has just the thing, and pulls out a cinder-block from the trunk of the car. A cinder-block. Yes…that will show that there opossum to mess with the law in Terrell.
February Opossum |
The officer figured that he could hold it in there with the block, and come back in the morning to get it. He got really mad when we all started laughing at his ‘police issue cinder-block’. Anyway, we ended up trying a grate to the cage and Animal Control came out in the morning.
Fast forward to last night…
At around 12:30, Tobi started barking like crazy. For the most part we ignored it since he’s always barking at something. But then, by about 1, the dogs back behind us started barking as well. I flashed a light outback and didn’t really see anything, so I figured it was just a cat. At 2, we were still awake due to all the barking. Even Hannah, who can sleep through most anything, was bouncing around in her crib, snorting at the window and saying ‘NO!’ every time the dogs started up again. I shined a light at the fence again and started yelling for Jason. It was the biggest damn opossum I’ve ever seen!
It was easily the size of a beaver! Thankfully, it was in the neighbors yard, but it kept charging the fence at Tobi and trying to take a chunk out of him. Jason went out and got Tobi hooked up to one of the tie outs. He said he couldn’t see it out there, but it must have gone over to the other side of the neighbors yard since the other dogs were going crazy. I wanted to get a picture of it, but wasn’t about to go out into the yard. The barking lasted well into the night, and we have no idea where the beaver-opossum went.
So, that’s two critters only three months apart, and we’ve never had them out here before…that we know of. Where are they coming from all of a sudden and why are they so big? They must be eating puppies or something. I’m fully expecting to find the three-eyed fish from the Simpson’s swimming around in the toilet any morning now.
Hi. I’m in Pflugerville Texas and we have beaver-possums too. My blog even has a picture of a baby possum hanging out in my backyard pool. LOL. I’m a new follower. Come follow me too?
YUCK! I’m in AL and one night, I looked out the front window next to our front door and saw one walking around toward the side of the house. They are freaky!
Following from the Sunday hop. http://www.faithfamilyfrugality.com
I am originally from MS but now live in Rhode Island — and lemme tell ya — I saw some scary oppossums (sorry but they are UGGGG-LY) down south and recently saw on here in RI in the suburbs that could have easily kicked my butt!
They freak me out!
Love your blog!
Hiya! Newest follower – found ya via The Not So Moody Monday Hop– please stop by and say hello! Would love if ya followed back!
♥cyn♥
The Purple Goddess
Ewww! We have plenty of opossums here in Ohio too. I lifted up the egg box to collect eggs one time and found one of those creatures instead. I screamed!
Just stopped by to say hi from the Alexa Blog Hop:-)
We have them here in Michigan too, but I think I’ve only ever seen them as road kill! I’m visiting from the Alexa blog hop 🙂 Have a nice night!