Infestation of Opossums

We seemed to be Opossum-free all day yesterday, but this morning we see that our kitchen has been revisited by the little bugger we didn't catch. See This Is Really Interesting below.

First, my husband saw a creature huddling in the corner of the bathroom. He put on some work gloves and went after it, but it ran under the washing machine, a new Bosch that's too heavy to shift. This was Sunday, and he came upstairs to tell me about the "baby raccoon," and see if I had any ideas. I suggested the Clarkstown Kops and/or whatever they call the "dogcatcher" these days, something like Wild Animal Manager. The kops said the animal management folks don't come for raccoons. Rattlesnake maybe. So then we talked about Hav-a-heart trap. But we'd rented the last one from Beckerle's Lumber, and they're closed on Sunday. At this point my sister-in-law called and she suggested that we could buy a trap at Home Depot. Since we had to buy it, and one large enough for a raccoon or woodchuck is over $50, I suggested the Large Squirrel size. Next came debating the bait. My husband favored canned cat food, but I said racoons love the dry kibble. So he put kibble on a small piece of cardboard and mounted it on the trap-snapper. Every few hours we would open the bathroom door and check. The creature finally went inside the trap, ate the kibble, and walked back out.

Now we got serious. My husband fiddled with the settings until the trap-closer was hair-triggered. The bait was peanut butter studded with kibble. It would not fall off and any attempt to eat it would slam the trap shut. We went upstairs to watch a movie. When we came back, there was this ratty, shaggy, dirty-white rat-looking thing. O may gawd, it's a baby possum, I cried. He was ugly and frightened. He had peed and pooped and his pointy mouth was open in a silent, absurdly nonthreatening hiss. My husband lifted the cage gingerly and said, What should I do with him, fling him in the lake? (Normally sanguine, Stewart was outraged at the creature's home invasion.) No, I said, take him over to the park, far enough away he won't find his way back here. He left, and I attended to the poop and pee on the bathroom floor. We felt pretty good. Until we realized we hadn't dealt with the entire invasion force. To be continued...