The Attack of the Man Eating Possum

The Attack of the Man Eating Possum

Recently, my twelve year old son, Christian, and I arrived at our home after participating in a Scout activity.  It was after 9:00 PM on a school night, which is late for our routine and therefore we were anxious to get in the house, shower and get to bed.  When we pulled into the driveway the serenity of living in the country was immediately shattered by our two dogs barking incessantly at a bush near the front porch.  At first glance neither of us was too concerned because our two dogs bark nonstop throughout most of the day except for when they are asleep.

We have a medium size mutt, which is a cross between a Black Labrador and a Golden Retriever that we call PITA (an acronym for Pain In The Arse).  Pita is about 6 years old. She is playful, yet protective of what belongs to her and her family.  She also puts up with Gretna, the little Chihuahua mix that we picked up from the local animal shelter earlier this year.  Gretna is about two years old and is the one we should have named PITA.  When Gretna is not barking at the mythical creatures she somehow sees floating in the breeze, she is peeing on anything and everything within eye shot, especially if the target has any kind of monetary or sentimental value.

When I pulled into the driveway and heard the dogs barking, I urged Christian to jump out of the car before I pulled into the garage and to shut the dogs up before they woke up half of the people in Eastern Tennessee.  Christian bounded out of the car and headed straight for the yapping dogs.  Before I could even get the car into drive, I heard Christian yell, WHOAAAAAA!  Then I saw him back up slowly.  I jumped out of the car to see what was wrong.  When Christian saw me heading in his direction, he said to me, without taking his off what was causing the commotion, “Look at that?”

That’s when I saw him.  He was the largest possum (I think their formal name is opossum, but we are in Tennessee, after all) in captivity, although he wasn’t in captivity, but you know what I mean.  He was the biggest, meanest, ugliest, most ferocious looking beast I had ever witnessed.  The best I could tell, because he was crouched down under a holly bush, he was about 5 or 6 feet long, stood probably about 3 or 4 feet when he was on all fours and he had teeth that were about 4 inches long and looked to be very, very sharp.  He had the eeriest beady black eyes that shot terror flaming towards anyone that dared look at him.

“Back up slowly, Christian.” I said to my son.  We both inched our way backward trying desperately not to trigger this man eating carnivore.  After we had moved to what we had determined to be a safe distance away, I told Christian that I should go in and get my shotgun and try to kill this beast before it eats everyone in our family.

“Really?” was all Christian said.

“Yes!” I answered.  “This thing could wreak havoc on our whole family, not to mention what he would do to our chickens as soon as he caught their scent from the back of the house.”

“Well, let me go in the house first.  I don’t want to be a witness to this.”

Christian disappeared into the house and I just stood and stared at this prehistoric looking creature.  He was not moving at all, which I thought to be a little odd.  One would ordinarily think that as soon as the possum saw that there was a window of opportunity, he would make a dash for the darkness and safety.  Maybe he was hurt!  Maybe PITA did something to him that immobilized him!  I decided that it would be almost barbaric of me to shoot an animal that was lame just because it had scared the bajeebes out of me.  But, how was I to be sure he was really hurt?  I slowly started walking in his direction.  The closer I got the scarier he looked.  Now I’m thinking that maybe his teeth were 5 or 6 inches long and as sharp as razors.  I got about three feet from him, too scared to get any closer and discovered that I hadn’t discovered anything.  I still could not determine why he was not trying to escape.

As I backed away from him, I decided that I needed to scare him somehow to see if he would run away.  I looked around the area and found a large decorative paving brick.  I will just toss this over in his direction and the noise of the brick landing near him will scare him into action.  The plan was simple, but fool proof…or so I thought.  I picked up the brick and raised it over my head.  Walking towards the animal, I stopped when I was about ten feet away.  I heaved the brick in perfect shot put form and much to my surprise, it hit the poor animal right in the head.  It was a great shot, but certainly not intended.

“Well, crap.” I uttered to myself, I just wanted to scare him, not kill him.  I watched for a few seconds to see if he was going to move.  Move!?  I noticed when I approached, he was lying on his side, eyes closed not moving, not breathing…dead.  “Holy crud!” I said out loud.  “I killed the dang thing.”

I walked over to the garage where I had a shovel leaning against the wall.  I felt like the least I could do now was to have a proper possum burial for the creature I had murdered.  I slowly walked back to the scene of the crime and gingerly approached the animal.  I squatted down on my haunches and moved to about a foot or so away from his face.  I guess I wanted to say I was sorry…or something.  It was at that precise moment that I understood the age old adage about “playing possum.”  That horrific beast shot his face up at mine and glared at me with those black eyes, his watering fangs but inches from my eyes.  I sprang to my feet and without thinking, grabbed the brick and in one swift move raised it over my head and slammed it down on the possum’s head…again.  This time he did not move.  He was down for the count.  I stood there for a moment trying to catch my breath and wondering if I was so scared that I had somehow inadvertently started profusely sweating in my crotch area, or if the moisture was from some other source.

I did have my shovel with me, so I decided to pick the thing up with the shovel and take him down the road a ways and toss him back into the underbrush.  I was not so bent now on the whole “proper possum burial” thing as I had been earlier. 

Not to be deceived again, I took the shovel and poked the creature a few times to see if he really was dead.  Sure enough, his body was lifeless and limp.  I worked for several minutes trying to get the shovel under the corpse, but finally succeeded.  I hadn’t taken more than two steps when this thing came back from the dead, reared his head around to look at me and snarled like a half crazed wild beast.  I immediately dropped the shovel and watched as the possum tried to scurry away.  The bashes to the head, however, must have made him a little off center.  He only ran about a step or two and then stopped.  He looked back at me and made this awful sounding gut wrenching snarl and I thought for a second that I was going to be eaten by this rare people eating opossum.

However, I quickly came to my senses and without a second thought I grabbed the shovel and in one swift blow I lowered that spade down on top of the head of the beast.  I think it knocked him out temporarily, but I was leaving nothing to the imagination.  I lowered another blow to his head and neck area.  He was finally dead.

I picked the thing up, took him down the road, as planned, and placed him underneath a clump of bushes.

I walked silently back to the house trying to figure out how to tell my wife of the night of terror when I faced the jaws of hell head to head and conquered that mighty dragon.