Possum Number 4

The only good thing I have to say about possums is that they are easy to catch.  We bait the have-a-heart trap with peanut butter in an empty cat food can, and usually catch one in a couple of hours.  How do we know there is a marauder?  Because when we go into the garage there it sits, eating dry cat food; it hisses but doesn't leave.  The trap is really getting a workout right now.  The funny part is when C releases it into the woods it will cling to the wire of the trap and he has to shake it vigorously to get it to fall out.  Dumb beasts.

I fell last night.  I was getting ready to light a candle, candle in one hand and lighter in the other, when my right knee buckled and down I went, candle, lighter, walker and me all together.  Fortunately I had not lit the candle yet.  I will have to think again about the brace, if I am ever to trust my footing again.  I am bruised up a bit, but no head injury, my main fear.  That, and falling in the bathroom where everything is hard and sharp-cornered, and I surely won't come away unscathed.

C rooted through the coat closet yesterday, and the things I am missing are NOT there.  He did find my raincoat, although I have ordered a new one before he did.  It is backordered so I have a week or so to decide if I need a new one or not.  Meaning, does it still fit?  I am thinking the sewing things are upstairs in N's former room, but I cannot do the stairs until my bruises and bangs heal.  There is a ton of stitchery stuff in a big dresser, but I can't remember what is and what is not there.

My page views here have been climbing by leaps and bounds, probably because it is funny,  part of the time.  For instance:

Which is, at least, a little bit funny.

This is by Scott Adams:

As a vegetarian, I can only handle seeing dead animals up to a certain size before I get a serious case of the heebie jeebies. I'm not too bothered looking at dead bugs and mice, under the theory that "they are little." But this possum was way above my heebie jeebie threshold. Worse yet, possums are notorious for pretending to be dead. I wasn't about to be fooled by the oldest trick in the animal kingdom.

I looked carefully to see if the possum was breathing through a thin reed of some sort. I saw nothing. Nor did I see any air tanks or diving apparatus. The only possibility was that he was holding his breath. I checked the Internet to see how long a possum can hold its breath. Apparently much research needs to be done in that area.

As luck would have it, today was the day the pool cleaning service was scheduled to clean the pool. If I pretended I didn't know there was a possum down there, the pool guy would have to fish it out. That way HE would be the one embarrassed by the possum's trickery. The only problem with that approach is that if the possum was really dead, the pool guy would have to leave it somewhere. He certainly wasn't going to take it with him in the truck. ("Here, little buddy, you ride shotgun.") If I were the pool guy, I'd be mad that I had to take a possum out of a pool. For revenge, I'd try to think up a funny place to put it, like in the hammock.

So I decided to take care of the job myself. I took the pool-cleaning apparatus that has a shallow net on the end of a long pole. That is the preferred tool for possum removal. Not only can it reach the bottom of the pool, but because it's long, it has the leverage you need to fling the possum over the fence and into the neighbor's pool.

This method worked well. The only problem is that every other day the possum is back in my pool. I expect some tension at the next neighborhood block party