Our Freaky Lil' Visitor

It all happened one rainy night last week. I had avoided my typical after-dark visit to the bunnies in the backyard in an attempt to stay dry. After the rain let up, I walked outside to the sidewalk and waved my hand in front of the sensor for the floodlight. I heard a freakish little squealing sound by my foot and then the light popped on. I wasn't sure what to expect so when I looked down and saw a possum two inches from my foot I leaped two feet off the ground and promptly did an eebie-jeebie dance in, what I hoped to be, the opposite direction of the furry little creature. I'm sure you're thinking, "It's a possum Jessica. Not a rattle snake." So I say to you, have you ever seen a possum up close? Those little things are kinda freaky and have some sharp, nasty teeth. There's a reason you give a kid a stuffed teddy bear and not a stuffed possum. Not a cuddling kind of critter. So after the eebie-jeebies were gone, (about 5 seconds later) I turned around and saw how scared the little thing was. It kept running into the chain-link fence in a desperate attempt to flee. No longer creeped out by it, I went along my business and fed the bunnies. When I turned around, I heard something strange and saw that it had actually climbed the wet, slick fence and was walking tediously across the bar at a snail's pace. It was probably hoping that I wouldn't notice. I can imagine how terrified it must have been when I ran in the house to get Josh and my camera. Now instead of one scary human, there were two and one of them had a little gizmo that shot balls of bright, blinding light into it's eyes. I got within ten or less feet of it once it had rounded the corner and snapped a photo of it.

Never seen a possum do this before. It froze dead still as I snapped the photo. I couldn't tell if it wanted to feign death or if it was contemplating leaping into the air to rip my face off. Either way, I made sure it was a very quick photo. Now I know who is making all the ruckus outside every night in our trash cans. Needless to say, my nightly trips to the bunnies cage involve a few extra heartbeats in the fear that I might actually step on him next time. I'm not really in the mood for a case of rabies.