I think its an opossum or a rat...

This morning when I went out to get food for Hank, the cat, I noticed the bag was such that something had been in the bag the night before.

This evening, I'm sitting at the dining room table, and I hear the cat food bag crinkle, like something is getting in it. So I call to Hubby that something is in the cat food bag. We get a flashlight (the bag is in the garage), and take a peak.

We opened the door just a bit, since we'd been informed of skunks roaming the area. The thought of being sprayed by a skunk was not appealing. We've seen that Myth Buster's episode.  We could see that the bag was bent over, like a small critter had gotten into it, but we couldn't see the critter. "Must of scared it off" one of us said. But then I crouched down, and I saw it... a tail. Not a cat tail, and too big to be a mouse tail. I said, "look there, a tail. I think its an opossum, or maybe a rat".

Now, I took a mammology (study of mammals) class back in college where we went out spotlighting each night (and the prof shot the animal in the spotlight), trapped small mammals, and skinned and stuffed them. That was the summer of '98... 13 years ago. But I knew this tail, even if I've never seen a live opossum before.

Hubby rattled the bag, but the critter didn't move. Finally, we grabbed the yard stick, and from behind the kitchen-garage door, we stuck the yard stick into the side of the bag. The bag moved. And we both jumped back and slammed the door closed.

We did not want that critter in the house.

We calmed ourselves (this was exciting stuff!) and peaked out from around the door, and saw that the bag was empty of the critter (there was still cat food, luckily). I got down on my knees to look under the car... and there he was (maybe it was a she?) in his drastically long and hairless tailed glory. An opossum. And he just sat there and looked at me. That is one brave, or stupid, animal.

I hear Hubby moving behind me and I said, "the camera's on the table" and he says "I'm not going for the camera". He'd pulled out the bb gun. He pinged a few shots at it, and scared it enough to set it running out of the garage. So, no picture. Blame the Hubby. (I love you, Hubby of mine!)

He was at least as big as the cat. And that tail was longer than his body.  Its one thing to see pictures and read about the animals. Its another see one.

And at least it wasn't a skunk. Right?