I’d say you won the thread.
Sure and begorrah!
The pronunciation of the “o” is optional when it’s spoken, so I guess you could make a good case for the spelling also being optional. But I didn’t post that to be a spelling nazi. I just thought that you might be an Aussie, and if so, I was trying to comfort you that at least it was a cute beast in your bed. But now that I know it was an American vermin, I guess my attempt to console you was fruitless. :smack:
Okay I have to tell the Opossum sleepover story, it’s long but here it goes.
Back when my boys were about 11 and 13 I had a lumber rack next to my shop that an opossum had taken up residence under.
It looked very much like the Our variety photo above if you pointed a light under there at it.
It was a big’un, I guessed about 20 lbs and I didn’t want to take it on directly.
My boys were terrified of it.
So I set a large wire pallet box, upside down, supported by a stick with a rope on it and put a trail of cat kibble leading under the box.
Somebody needed to watch for the opossum to take the bait and pull the rope.
I enlisted the kids by having them sit in our van with the rope through a partially open window.
The girlfriend at that time and I got to sit in the house for several hours, WITHOUT KIDS!
Until we heard a Bang.
The opossum didn’t go under the trap, he just ate all the food up to the edge of the box then wandered off, the kids just pulled the stick when they opened the van door.
So this all just sets the stage, the next night, Saturday my younger son had a sleepover for 6 of his friends aged 10 – 12.
They had the usual noisy, messy party and settled down for an evening of video games.
The GF and I headed to bed.
About 1 AM we were awakened to a horrendous crashing and yelling.
I went to investigate and the whole bunch of them were assembling stick, bars, pieces of bed and whatever weapon like thing they could get their hands on for an expedition out to the car.
Seems one of them needed some medication that was in a bag in the car and my boys had assured the rest of them they would instantly be torn to bloody bits by ravening hordes of rabid opossums and none of them thought of just asking me to go get it.
I went out to get it and noticed about that time that I didn’t have an underwear bottom on, everything was hanging out. :eek:
I retrieved the medication and slid back into the bedroom with a minimum of dangling.
No opossum to be seen.
Good thing that opossum didn’t get a hold of your openis!
That’s the easiest way to move them, even the big males. The tails are prehensile, so you’re not hurting them. They won’t try to bite you either (possums typically won’t bite – they’ll hiss a lot or play dead). I’ve even removed a possum that wasn’t reachable by using a long stick to wrap its tail around, then lifting it away.
The school custodian had trapped a half-grown one at our school and then didn’t know what to do with it. I volunteered to take it home, out to the country, and release it in the wildlife preserve across the way. It hissed viciously all the way home in the van, to the terrror/delight of my kids. I hauled the live trap over into the brush, opened it up…and it refused to leave. I upended the trap and it fell out on my feet, where it promptly clung to my leg and looked pathetic. I talked to it encouragingly until it got the courage to take off on its own.
lol! Esp since in many redneck locations (like around here) opossum can be slang for something else I am too classy a guy to mention here in this thread. 
OK. I’m not easily freaked out by small wild animals, but a possum? In my bed?
HELLS NAWL!
One night, while I had my back door open (screen door latched, thank goodness), I happened to glance out onto the fire escape. Why was there a giant silohuette of a possum just standing there?! Just looking at me? I ran and closed the door like the big scaredy cat, thinking that alone would chase him away. But no. Every time I dared myself to look out of the window, he would be there! Just standing there like a monster. Finally he left. I keep waiting for him to come back but he has never returned.
Another day, while I was downtown, I happened to look up at the telephone wires overhead and there was a giant possum! Looking down at me again! I screamed and pointed to it, but no one else acted like it was a big deal. So every time I hit that intersection, I look up just to see if he’ll be there. Apparently it was a one time thing.
Or maybe he was a possum ghost, the same one who visited me that night! And maybe HE was in the OP’s bed!
(If a possum had woken me up like that, I KNOW I would have peed on myself. I absolutely know it!)
Ack, what a nightmare. What if you’d tried to get in bed without seeing the outline of it on the bed? 
When I was in college, my boyfriend-at-the-time liked to tell his possum story. He had just come to town for grad school (5-hour drive and he was tired after packing and driving all day). He had signed lease paperwork the week before on an apartment sight-unseen (based on floor plans online, distance to campus, and all that jazz). He got his key, went to the place, and upon unlocking the door found a possum sitting in the living room. Just sitting there. He shut the door, went to the leasing office, and DEMANDED they tear up the lease. They did 
When I was a kid, me and my sister were sharing an upstairs bedroom and a goddamn BAT got in, at like 3 am. It woke us up because it was circling the room in the dark and squealing. Then we were squealing. Our dad came up and caught it in a towel, then took it to an undisclosed location and did something undisclosed to it. I never asked, didn’t want to know!
Then at Christmas that year, we were woken up again at three AM by the sound of animals running up and down the stairs, fighting, and being unruly. We were terrified that it was another bat-like situation (but with racoons). Instead they were a surprise present-kittens! But still, it was scary until we figured it out.
I have not had the pleasure of a possum in my dwelling.
I did, however, have a toad in the powder room toilet. I had my pants down and was about to sit down when I spotted it inside the bowl. It looked like a turd. At first, I thought, “Man, somebody forgot to flush!”
But then it occurred to me: how would the turd stick to the side of the bowl under the rim like that? Can you poop crooked that way? Wouldn’t it slide down into the water? Was it some kind of explosive diarrhea?
As I was puzzling over this, the “turd” blinked at me.
Yeah, I screamed. Having what you thought was a piece of crap that hadn’t been flushed suddenly come to life tends to do that. Somehow, I remembered to get my pants back up before I went running out of the bathroom in a panic. I can only imagine what would have happened if I’d sat down and that thing had hopped up and bumped my ass. I might still be unconscious four years later.
Edit: After he laughed himself sick at me, my dad went in there, grabbed the toad out of the bowl with a dish towel, and threw it out the front door.
Search fails me, but a few years ago an infrequent poster told a quite funny tale about a bat getting into her apartment. Anybody remember that or bookmark it?
I had a possum climb in to my mom’s old house when I was the only one living there. Being more than moderately freaked out by this evil-looking giant rodent thing in my kitchen hissing at me at 2AM I shot it.
Raccoons were also chronically tearing into the trash outside that house. It occasionally didn’t end well for them.
I am not the “bat poster” mentioned above, but I did have one fly in to my apartment in '99. It was a “penthouse” apartment on the fifth floor of a brownstone. The damn thing flew through an partially open window and preceded to drive my cats insane. Their maniacal running around and the “flap-flap-flap” of bat wings eventually woke me. I managed to knock it down with a broom, stunning it and then flicked it out the door onto the roof where it promptly flew away.
The drive to the undisclosed location went a little something like this;
Possum: Well, now she knows. We don’t have to hide anymore! No more sneaking around, no more sexting instead of romance! I feel free now, don’t you??
Why are you pulling over here, there’s no buildings or anything, not even a streetlight?
Carlotta’s Husband: I’m sorry Possum, I truly am; but the end’s been coming for some time now and I think I owe it to my marriage to make a fresh start. Hop out, I have something for you in the trunk so we’ll always remember each other and our precious time together.
They exit the car.
(Silence, sudden hissing, then a wet thud.)
Trunk closes, Husband backs up and drives forward several times, then pulls away into the night leaving a furry grease spot in his wake.
I knowed folk what et them critters. Long with sweet taters. Back home in Texas, that wuz.
chizzuk I am up way too late and laughing way too hard. Thank you for that.
Put the possum in a cage and feed it on a diet of persimmons for several weeks. I’ll go look up the rest of the recipe for you.
Me too! I think I’ll always have this line etched in my memory:
I wanna know what middle son was up to that he didn’t show!
I keep hearing Dame Edna saying, “Hello, possums!”
I walked into the laundry room at my mom’s once and found a possum sitting on top of the washer looking at me. I backed away slowly and found a nearby man to pick him (or her, I didn’t enquire) by the tail and release him outdoors.
Found a dead one stinking up my shed. Tried picking it up with a snow shovel (American Opossum). Two notes: Dead ones smell more like rotting reptiles than rotting mammals. And they can dribble dead young-uns from out their pouches. The latter is grosser.
The next door neighbor probably plinked her. I shoulda tossed her over the fence.
ETAA: Bill, I use an air rifle. Virtually silent. Even your .22 draws attention.