Possum in a Pail...Fur on a Fanny

City Boy meets Country Girl

Fiwa, this is for you...

Back in August of 2001, my man Andy moved in with me. He jumped right into my life and started helping around the house, cooking and helping me do yard and garden work. One day he went out to mow the lawn but he was only outside a moment when he came running into the house, out of breath and all shook up about something. I came out of the kitchen and he started talking 90 miles an hour about a huge rat, the size of a big cat, that was sleeping in a bucket in my old garden shed, where we stored the mower. He was sputtering and stuttering and didn't know what to do.

I followed him outside and he pointed in the general direction of the "rat".

I approached the shed and kiddingly said "You've got my back, right Andy?"

He said "Of course I do."

I scoped out the area and saw a hole in the back of the shed, so I knew the "rat" had an out and wouldn't be too confrontational or feel cornered. I suspected that it wasn't a rat at all but a possum. Sure enough, there was a big old possum sleeping in a bucket in the back corner of the shed. I poked the bucket with my toe and the possum woke up, slowly ambled out of the bucket and out the hole in the back of the shed.

I said, "Did you see that Andy, it was just an old possum... Andy? He's gone now. Andy? Andy?" I turned around and there was my "city boy" all the way down by the street curb, about 50 feet away from me.

I couldn't help myself and I sure didn't mean to hurt Andy's ego but I was laughing hysterically and said, "I thought you had my back??"

"Um...ah...I just wanted to give you plenty of room to get out of his way, in case he came at you", Andy said.

"That was very thoughtful of you." I giggled.

I still laugh to the point of needing Depends when I think of this...not because Andy mistook a possum for a rat, or because he backed way across the yard to the street away from the situation...but because of what he must have thought about ME!

He was probably wondering what kind of Amazon-country-hillbilly-EllieMayClampet-wild animal confronting crazy woman he had gotten tangled up with!!!

I've never been afraid of animals. I used to work at the feed and tack store at our local horse race track. I worked with a man who was morbidly terrified of mice. He was a big strapping man who could lift two of those 80lb. sacks of feed at a time like they were feathers. Mice were the worst fear he had (that I knew of). I thought that was silly and used to love to catch baby mice by their tails and go "show" them to him.

Okay, so I'm Ellie May with a mean streak!!

There was one time I can remember vividly when an animal freaked me out.

My husband and I had some land for our horses that we intended to eventually build a house on, he got cancer and didn't survive so that dream never came true.

But I digress.

We spent a lot of time at the farm, riding, training the horses and working on the property. We didn't have any type of "facilities" so my DH, who was a great carpenter, built us a wooden frame, put a toilet seat on it and a bucket lined with those porta-potty bags and the blue liquid stuff, under the toilet seat. He put it in the feed room, right next to the feed box that we kept the horses' grain in so the door could be closed, in the event of company at the barn and someone needing to use the potty and wanting a bit of privacy.

Viola! We had facilities!!

We got out there one day and I was in urgent need, so that's the first thing I did was use the potty. I no sooner got sat down and I felt fur...lots of it...rubbing against my bare butt. It was the biggest raccoon I'd ever seen in my life. He squeezed between me and the wall the potty was sitting against in our hay room, where the potty was placed. Suddenly I didn't have to pee...I bolted out of there so fast, I can only imagine what my DH thought as he saw me flying out of the feed room, pants around my knees, shrieking to high heaven! I thought my DH was going to fall over he was laughing so hard.

And by way of penance for laughing at Andy over the possum situation, I told him about my own coon encounter so he wouldn't feel so bad!!

P.S. I can still remember the feel of that fur rubbing along my butt as if it was yesterday!! That really freaked me out!!