And I felt bad for these nasty things???

The BBQ Pit
1

In this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=36419
I went on about how I felt sorry for the nasty rat-like icky possum creatures…needless to say things have changed!!!

Last week I was standing at my stove, happily cooking away, when I heard my dogs come tearing into the house through their dog-door and chased something into the house and right up to my feet. I looked down by my feet thinking they had chased one of my cats into the house…but was it one of my cats?? Noooooo, it was a fucking huge possum!! This was NOT what I had expected to see.
Naturally I scream and run into the hall. I finally get some courage up and chase my dogs from the possum (who had wedged itself into a corner) and throw them outside and block the dog door. Then I sat on my kitchen table wondering what to do with this wet, nasty creature that made no sign of moving from its present location.
I decide shit like this doesn’t happen everyday so I got my phone and called my best friend and shared my story. Then I get brave, I mean REALLY REALLY brave (for me).
I poke the possum with the broom-it hisses at me. I poke it again, it moves! I then grab my mop, and with the broom in one hand and the mop in another, I herd it though my house and out the front door…VICTORY! (or so I thought)

I let the dogs back in and go about my business.

About an hour later (keep in mind this is about 1am) I hear my dogs making sounds like they are fighting so I run to the back door and open it, getting ready to yell at them to quit, when I look down and see THAT VERY SAME FUCKING possum passed out on my back porch!! I am NOT a happy camper by this time and now have to lock my dogs IN the house so they don’t rip this stupid creature up, and I wait for a bit until it wakes up and walks off and I let them back outside.

Now fast forward a few days.

It’s warmish and humid here and this town naturally stinks when the weather gets like this. So, my house smells a bit “off”. I don’t think much of it and just put up with it.

Next day it smells a little bit worse, now I start looking around a bit to see if I can find anything in the house that would be making it stink! Can’t find anything.

Now it’s today, and it’s pretty ripe in here. I am now pretty certain SOMETHING is dead in this house (and hoping like hell it’s not one of my cats). I look and look and finally grab a flashlight and look behind my living room couch (that has a bunch of junk under it, games, etc) and see something fuzzy stuffed back there. Now I’m almost freaking out because I think it has to be one of my cats.

I pull the couch from the wall.

I finally see what is back there.

It’s a possum. A maggot-ridden possum. Wedged behind my couch. It’s a big one too. Now my house REALLY smells bad. I grab the Lysol and spray for a good minute or two. I won’t go into anymore details on how I managed to get the thing in a trash bag and out into the trash can-I would rather block that out of my mind.

I have come to a CONCLUSION. That conclusion is…

** I HATE POSSUMS DIE! DIE NASTY CREATURES…just not in my house!!!**

2

Ok…that just made me want to hurl. gag gag

I’m very sorry to hear about your couch. And I hate possums too, but luckily I’ve never had such…an experience.

I just want to get that image out of my head now, excuse me.

3

Don’t get any fruit trees, then. The bastards love them, and will knock the fruit to the ground and eat it. I had them coming every night, and they would make a huge mess. I call animal sevices, and they say “the possums were here first. We can rent you a live-capture trap for $50 per month, and relocate the possums when we capture them, but they will probably come back.” I buy a live-capture trap at Home Depot for $25, and catch one a night for a week, releasing them about 30 miles away near an orchard. They are happy, I am happy.

4

Damn that evil thing for being chased by dogs! The fucker!

I hope it burns in hell for hissing and snapping after being poked with a stick!

How dare it die? Doesn’t it understand property rights?
Fucking inconsiderate nature, always getting in the way. . .

5

Andros: After saving it from my dogs, it comes BACK into my yard…(I think Mr. Dead Possum is that possum)…and coming back into my house, and dying behind my couch…I think it’s not unreasonable on my part to feel a teensy bit upset about that.

6

I’m one of those people who like natural history and I usually like all critters. I even like spiders, snakes, and scorpions. However, I have a short list of critters I detest, and I will freely admit that this is a totally unreasonable attitude. Animals are just animals, and all that, and we shouldn’t assign them any human characteristics. Having said that . . .

I HATE POSSUMS!

They look like big, untidy, brain-dead rats. They do just like you said, gillygirl: they sit and stare at you and hiss despite your efforts to shoo them or scare them. A past neighbor of mine used to feed feral cats (he thought), but what he didn’t know was that big fat possums came every night and frightened away the cats and ate all the cat food. I tried to shoo them off our fence, but they just stared at me and didn’t move. They give me the creeps. At least they’re too dumb to get out of the way of moving cars and their population gets reduced that way, not that it seems to make much of a dent . . .

As a slight hijack, the other critters I can’t stand:

hyenas
centipedes
pigeons

7

I dunno if this works for possums (they can fly, for all I know), but in Hawaii, you see sheets of metal, maybe a foot and a half wide, wrapped about 4-6 feet up the trunks of all the coconut trees. When I was a kid, I asked my dad what these were for, and he told me that it was to keep animals (namely mongooses, mongeese, whatever) from climbing up and eating the coconuts. Might work, might not…
Releasing them near an orchard? That’s funny. Mean, but funny.

8

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

There goes my lunch.

I feel for you, man.

Ugh.

May all the freakin’ little possums die aweful deaths, just not behind our couches…

Ugh.

9

Well, we need to centipedes to get rid of the spiders.

  • how do we get rid of the centipedes then?*
    Easy. We bring in wave after wave of pigeons and they’ll eat the centipedes.
    But isn’t that a bit short sighted? Then there will be a pigeon problem!
    Oh no! Because after that we ship in a special type of hyena that thrives on pigeon meat.
    So what do we do about all the hyenas running around?
    That’s the beautiful part. Soon winter rolls around and they all freeze to death.
10

Upset, sure. I sympathize completely. (Remind me to tell you a horrible story about a raccoon I once encountered.)

But you goot admit, it’s not like the poor thing was out to get you or anything.

Agenda:

8:00 Run from dogs
9:00 Piss off Gillygirl
10:00 Eat some fruit
11:00 Die behind a sofa, so my maggot-ridden corpse will piss off Gillygirl some more

11

DAMMIT! Who the fuck stole my planner? That’s my schedule for tomorrow! This isn’t the end of the story, I’ll find out who took it…

12

I have no idea why these things come into my backyard. The only trees I have back there are pecan trees.
And before people get the idea I’m a cold-hearted bitch lemme explain…
I have never encouraged my dogs or cats to kill.
I have saved more possums in my backyard than I care to remember.
Will I continue to lock my dogs in the house when one of those stupid creatures wanders into my yard? Of course.
I poked the damn possum with the SOFT part of the broom, not the handle.
The only creatures I kill are roaches, skeeters,and flies. even then I feel bad. I kill roaches because I fear them.
I kill skeeters because they cause nickle sized itchy welts.I kill flies because they don’t know how to stay out of the way. I don’t even kill the wasps that have nests around my house because I’ve never been stung by one.
Am I saint for doing/not doing these things? 'Course not. I just don’t kill needlessly or for a thrill.
And yep, I will continue loathing every single possum that comes into my backyard.

13

pugluvr - I agree with you in the Hyena thing… they are always strolling into my back yard, eating my dog’s food, terrorizing my cats, and then laughing like crazy which keeps me up all night…

And then there’s the Hippos… they come and graze on my lawn at night and leave huge piles of dung…

Crocodiles… nuff said…

I can only see Hyenas being a problem if you live in Africa, if you do… I apologize…

14

Mmmmmmmmmmm Possum!

15

I’m tired of finding all those hyenas under my kitchen sink! And the Raid doesn’t kill them anymore!

Living happily in the bay area of California, thanks. Yeah, I realize I’ll never meet one in the flesh (ouch!). But I love nature shows and whenever I see a documentary about African wildlife, I usually see them. There’s something about their posture, their whooping calls, just SOMETHING that must speak to my hindbrain. I guess it’s the prey animal buried down inside me that gets the willies from that call. --shudder–

Sorry for the hijack!

16

Possums are evil. I spent a summer working for an exterminator. My job was to get under the crawlspace of a house with a claw-hammer and dig a trench so that he could stick his hose inside (take that however you want–he was a bastard) and fill the trench with fluid. One thing he forgot to tell me: if mamma possum is in there with baby possums, she’ll chew one of the cheeks off your ass if she can. Imagine this–I’m over 6 feet tall, I’m in a 2 foot high crawl-space, and I’m being chased by an 8 inch possum.

Remember that claw-hammer? She probably doesn’t.

17

I always had a soft spot in my heart for possums as I believe (although I may not be correct) that they are the only marsupial in North America.

Also, when I was a kid (about 4th grade) my science teacher had a possum in some kind of a cage in the science room. We all got to hold it. It hung off of my arm by its tail.
I don’t remember being particularly repulsed. From what I remember it was a bit beady eyed, coarse haired and smelly. Not exactly cute but not horrifying either.

Of course, YMMV.

18

I smell a Simpsons reference! Sorta.

Where I grew up, possums were an everyday sort of occurrence. We even had one as an unofficial “pet.” He’d come up to the back porch and munch on the cat food we had out for the strays. We named him (actually her…she raised whole possum generations on cat food) Po’ Sam. Get it? :slight_smile:

Fun possum fact: if they bother you, lift 'em by the tail. It paralyzes them temporarily. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve grabbed one and tossed it off into the woods.

When I lived in DC, I was on the way to work one morning and happened across a crowd gathered around something. I craned my neck and guess what I saw hanging on to the top of a chain-link fence? Po’ Sam. All the yuppies in suits and sneakers were gathered around it, mystified. They had that half fascinated, half repelled look written all over them. I could not believe that not a single member of the crowd (probably 35-40 people) knew what a possum was. I guess they thought it was a king-size, nuclear rat. I felt sorry for the little marsupial slob (they always remind me of hobos…they have this disheveled, slightly desperate look about them,) walked up, grabbed his tail, and hoisted. As always, it went slack and cooperative. Sheeeeeit…you’d have thought I was St. George proudly displaying the head of a freshly slain dragon. The crowd oohed and aahed, and I actually felt pretty good about myself. Right about then is when I realized I was standing on a sidewalk in the nation’s capital in a shirt and tie, holding a huge possum by the tail for the amusement of commuters. I tossed him off into the woods and went about my business. :slight_smile:

19

I call the big one Bitey!

20

LOL My midnight Sergeant told me the same thing after I told him my possum story. I MIGHT be able to do that with one of the small ones that come into my yard…but this guy was the size of one of my cats! I’d have to swing him in a circle a few times to get any sort of decent momentum up…and frankly that is just a wee bit too much to expect from myself LOL It’s times like these I wish I had a boyfriend here!