Don't I have a bb gun around here somewhere?

Okay, seriously? No matter how hard I try to be in love with the so-called peace and quiet of living in the country, the cons so far outweigh the pros that I can't actually think of any pros at this moment.

So tonight I was already annoyed at myself because I was feeding Street's fish this weekend and of course forgot to do it while I was actually in town for church, so I said I would go back later, after my nap. Later turned out to be around midnight, which is my own stupid fault, but not the worst thing, even though I didn't get home until about 1 a.m. However, I have been watching too much Boomtown and have become a little paranoid that Chatham County is like East LA with gangs and scary people hiding behind the bushes and whatnot. Of course, I don't think people actually get murdered in Chatham County, though there are some more-than-occasional troubles at the Paradise Club down 87 - a strip club, it probably goes without saying - advertising "beautiful ladys. our prices beat the rest" on its backlit billboard on wheels.

ANYway, when I'm more rational, murder isn't actually the thing that freaks me out so much as the bugs, animals, darkness, and spiders. Until I moved to a horse ranch, I had remembered with vivid terror a chance encounter with a possum outside my bedroom window sometime in high school - I probably told that story like it was the worst thing that ever happened, since wildish animals weren't known to prowl around our neighborhood with much frequency, it being populated and not in the middle of a forest. Now I routinely almost run over possums who freeze like crazed lunatics and stare right into your approaching headlights, but I can leave them safely behind with just a little shudder.

Just fifteen minutes ago, however, owing to my stupidity of having a cat feeder on my front porch, I ran up the stairs to my house, praying that I wouldn't run headfirst into a giant spider web that the little devil keeps spinning right at head level between the posts of the porch, and there was a freaky, ratty, devily possum, chilling on the banister like he owned it. I screamed like a hysterical stupid girl in a horror movie, and it echoed all the way to the river, I swear. If I had any neighbors, they would have come running for sure.

And yet, he did not go away. I don't keep the porch light on because at least a million mosquitos and moths would come in when I opened the door, so I could have TOUCHED his horrible rat body and -- oh this is so awful I can't hardly type it -- his prehensile tail. I don't know what that means, but I know what it looks like. Ew ew ew. He's probably out there chowing down on Kit 'n Kaboodle as I write but I can't bring myself to go look again. Also, he won't be scared away, even with frantic banging on the glass and the freakishly girly screaming. The cat in this scenario sat at the bottom of the stairs and whined. Now I know why, though little did she know how not useful I'd be in saving her dinner.

I'm afraid this has officially put me over the edge. I am so thankful and indebted and thrilled with the house I live in, and the kind, benevolent people who employ me and give me more stuff than they ever should, but the country? Once I move, I'm never living here again. We are finished.