[It's been forever. I know. Forgive.]
The mystery of life is why the name of the blasted animal is spelled either opossum or possum. If only I were rich like the Hunters and I had the OED taking up many many shelves in my living room bookcases, I'd look it up. And did you know at one point you were supposed to pronounce the O? In honor of my confusion, I'm spelling today's story with the O.
See, every time I come home, I know when they've been there. The cat food bowl is licked clean, see, and cats don't lick. They leave all these little crumbs, like a baby. It's rather endearing. Not so endearing is the shiny opossum-slime covered clean dish, but I'm always just relieved they've gone away. And I vow -- usually out loud to the cat -- that there will be no more feeding on the porch and especially no more feeding of the opossums, and even though she's crying and whining, I get all bitter, like why didn't you eat it before they came, and why, for the love, didn't you chase them off?
Well, it turns out the reason her little skinny, scared-to-death of my foosteps self doesn't scare them off is because they are huge. Gigantic. Fatter than the fattest thyroid-troubled cat, fatter than the oldest dog who is blind and does nothing but eat all day, fatter than a fat lady's thigh. And I say them because there are two now. They were both on the porch at the same time last night, one on the railing pretending to be scared or dead or whatever nonsense they do instead of running away like respectable animals when I come driving up and flash my lights a few thousand times while hyperventilating in the car, the other one choosing the exact moment of my arrival to heave his grotesque body up the steps and sniff around. The fatter guy already ate it, though, and the cat whined and jumped on the hood of the car.
The main trouble is that there's no other way in the house without waking up Murch, which seemed rude last night, but this morning seems like a pretty good idea. So I come to the office instead, willing the fat beast to jump down and run away so I can pretend like it doesn't happen every. single. day. Matt is there, so he comes to help, not being quite so petrified as myself. His weapons: a hollow, plastic kiddie bat, a flashlight, and some pebbles. Pelting it about 30 times doesn't work. Chucking the bat at it doesn't work. So he manages to get up the stairs (fatty #2, upon finding the bowl shiny clean, has hauled himself away), into the house to find the broom and poke at it. And still, he sits on the ledge, maybe scared, maybe pissed; who knows. Matt said teeth were bared. Meanwhile, I'm in the car screaming into my jacket, waiting for him to come running down the stairs. Instead, Matt manages to push him over the ledge, where he does a painfully slow, deathgrip drama of falling incrementally, first down the railing, then to the second roof, then sliding down the tin where he lands in a heap on the sidewalk. And he isn't dead. He shakes himself out a little and waddles off. Meanwhile, I'm not sure I ever want to touch my broom again, and this night for absolutely positively sure that food is going down the stairs. Either that, or I'm moving to LA.
