This morning, just as the sun was thinking about waking up, the dogs were ready to go out. Jake the great soon realized that our yard was not empty of foreign creatures as it should be. Radar Love caught on in a timely manner.
Jake flew out the doggie door and straight to the far corner of the fence. Radar was on his heels. All I could see from my safe distance inside the screened in area was a white triangle with dark eyes. A possum!
By this time Jake was in this possum's face, barking away. Possum didn't move.
It must be injured, I thought, or rabid.
Along comes Big Bad Bob. He decided to throw a soccer ball at the poor creature. Still no movement. Bob thinks it's disoriented. So we all stay in the house watching to see what it will do next. Nothing.
I got out the phone book to call animal control. Just as I was going to dial the number, he moves. He makes his way along the fence until he comes to a small hole. He squeezes through and is out of our lives. He was just playing possum.
One night the family went out for a walk when we lived on Rae. There was a possum crossing the road. I ran over and picked him up by the tail and help him up in front of the kids. He hissed and hissed showing his sharp little white teeth.
Charlie was impressed.
When I was growing up we spelled possum "opossum", I guess it is the same creature. Edward caught a baby opossum when he was a boy scout and showed everybody how he had trained it to hang by its tail from his finger. He got a big kick out of that until the opossum bit him pretty darn good. I don't remember what happened to it after that.
Tonight I was walking Katie and Clio kind of late and Katie spotted something. She had found a possum in the grass between the sidewalk and the street. Once we all got there it keeled over onto its side and played dead. Katie got up close and sniffed it but didn't mind leaving it alone when I tugged at her leash, so it worked. We stopped about 25 feet away and waited for the possum to come back to life. After a couple of minutes it stuck its head back up. Then after another minute or two it scooted down the sidewalk away from us and then across the street.
NOTE: Playing possum may be effective in dealing with dogs, but is not as effective in dealing with oncoming traffic. Fortunately there was no traffic tonight.