My Pet Possum

So Patch here has been raiding my home for the past couple of days.  Initially noticed by my brother's wife, this little guy quickly became a bit of an amusement.  About four days ago he snuck into the laundry room sending Shari leaping onto the freezer screaming.


He'd probably crawled underneath the edge of the outside door then followed the smell of food she was snacking on.  After the freezer incident, she wasn't so shocked to see the little Possum.  We'd set out some food and box traps to try and round up the little guy, but instead of crawling into the trap, he crawled into an old speaker box and Shari blocked off the hole before he could get back out.

I tried to transfer him outside to a cardboard box, but he'd caught the edge of it when falling from the speaker box, and pulled himself over the edge and literally sprinted into the shrubs.  I figured that was the last of him.  The next night, he found his way back into the garage.  At some point he found out that he could crawl from behind the water heater, along the back of the cabinets, behind the freezer, then would just casually return to the water heater down the middle of the room.. occasionally stopping to stare at Shari who uses the quiet of the laundry room to read.  They almost appeared to have a bit of repore going on; she wouldn't scream and he'd be cute.  The smart little bugger even found he could climb up and extension cord to get on top of the freezer and nibble on her burrito.

Well, today she went home and I went out for dinner.  When I came home, I walked into the laundry room and found him on the counter.  I went to get my welder gloves to grab him and he dove off the counter behind the dryer.  I knew he was going to bolt behind the water heater again, so I plugged the holes to it with towels.  When I looked behind the dryer again, he'd vanished.  Shining a light behind the cabinets next to the water heater, I found him trying to get past the towels.  While he did that, I blocked the other end of the cabinets with more towels.

Eventually I had him pinned and tried to get him up out from behind the cabinets, but he was bigger than I expected (about the size of a Beanie Baby).  I unplugged one end of the cabinets and rigged the jar in the pictures to back him into.

Eventually, I had Possum Preserves...


Cute little guy:


After being canned, he was surprisingly calm.  I took him to the field down the street and let him out.  He turned around and just stared at me until I chased him away into some tall grass.

They're pretty cute when they're young.