“Death, Be Not Proud”
“I am a jolly Mayfly,”
Said this giddy little Bug;
”I may fly, then swiftly die,
Expiring on the nearest rug.”
And the little guy smiled all the while he spoke to me. I’m looking forward to meeting a June Bug in a few days. Who knows what a June Bug might have to say.
Two nights ago we had some unexpected excitement at three Fairway. It was about 1:30 in the morning, as far as I recall, when Schuster started barking ferociously at the far end of the house, the bedroom end; it was his I’ve-got-a-creature-cornered bark, in the house! I thought uh oh, he probably has found and cornered a mouse.
I scurried (a little mouse language humor there) to the bathroom just off the master bedroom where Schuster was furiously barking at the bucket holding the cleaning supplies. I shooed the little dog out of the bathroom, moved the bucket, and found, not a mouse, but a very young possum huddled in the corner, next to the bathtub and the wall, just over from the commode. I decided to see if I could pick him up, but like the young snake, he whipped around and bit me. Truth be told, he hit my hand but did not break the skin. What is it with these creatures? I just want to help them. Of course, considering how we humans treat one another, it is no wonder the natural world denizens do not trust us either, another consequence of the Fall.
I discovered that he had pee-soaked the floor, but I would deal with that later. Every creature in nature seems to pee when it is terrified, and the little fellow had evidently been chased through the house by a very substantial and much larger dachshund. The obvious solution was to find a cardboard box to contain the possum. I closed the bathroom door tightly to keep the dogs out and the possum in while I went down to the garage for a proper box. I found two that would work and carried them up to the bathroom.
By this time Mary was oohing and aahing over the little creature, wanting to adopt him, and so on. However, she held the box down on the right side of the toilet while I used the toilet brush to chase the possum from the other side of the toilet into the box. Eureka! It worked. We got the little guy into the box (see picture), took him outside. It was now about 2:30 a.m. We turned the box on its side, with half a ripe banana and some bread nearby, and went back in the house and off to bed. Well, not quite; I first cleaned the corner of the bathroom where the pee had happened. Now, Creature Feature completed.
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