Having a Possum Party?

Now I know better than to invite possums to my house

I once saw a small possum in my back yard, soon after I'd moved in to my house in Kansas.

How cute, I'd thought.

Didn't seem to bother anybody; didn't bother me.

But, boy, did it bother my dogs! And now I know better than to think possums (or opossums, to be accurate) are "cute."

Apparently, a little possum family had found a nice little apartment under my backyard shed. Every once in awhile, my dogs would become very curious indeed about the smells and stirrings under the shed. They'd occasionally bark, sometimes stare for hours at the dug-out area under the south side of the shed, ready to pounce on whatever those creatures were ... if they would only show themselves.

But they never bothered me too much, so I didn't worry about them.

One night recently, though, my cocker mutt, Roby, started barking like there must be a whole gang of hoodlums out in the alley. He doesn't bark much at all, as a rule, but tonight he was incensed, and really raising a ruckus!

Little Sammy, my Lhassa-poo mutt, jumped up from a deep sleep in his bed to see what all the excitement was about, and he, too, began barking up a storm.

Since they were causing such a ruckus outside, and it was nearly 10 p.m., I decided I better go out and see for myself what was going on. When I opened the door to the back yard, Sammy looked like a little 5-year-old who has just seen a police car zoom up the neighborhood street: "Something really big is going' on!" he seemed to say. (OK, I know I'm anthropomorphizing just a tad here.)

A voice said, "I see what they're barking about."

"What is it?" I asked.

The voice, attached to my neighbor, who was holding a big flashlight, said, "Look up on your fence," and he pointed the flashlight up on my 8-foot privacy fence.

There, perched high above my frantic dogs was the biggest rodent I'd ever seen -- a giant opossum! Nasty!

New York City has nothing on us in the middle of Kansas in the way of giant rodents! This thing was ugly!

Roby looked at me and seemed to be saying, "C'mon, Mom, knock it down -- let me at it! I've been wanting a piece of this thing for years!"

I thought better of it, and just ushered my dogs indoors, closing their doggie door behind them. Unfortunately, at the spot where they were terrorizing the rat ... uhhhh, possum ... there was no grass growing, and their paws were caked in mud. So off to the bath they went. Just what I wanted to do at 10 p.m., when I should be getting my beauty sleep: bathe my dogs.

Oh, well. A warm bath to calm the nerves is probably exactly what they needed.

By the way, in telling the story the next day to my co-workers, I learned that possums can be very mean indeed, and will jump on the backs of dogs (or cats) and may bite or otherwise injure your pet. I'm glad I brought my pups in when I did -- don't know who would have won that battle had the giant wild rodent decided to take a ride on the back of one of my domesticated pooches.