The Importance of "Drop It"

It's been pretty hot here in Los Angeles this past week. In fact, it's been so hot that it has actually woken nocturnal animals up during the day due to the fact that they're so hot and thirsty. Case in point: Monday's Possum.

My mom and I, along with my brother let the dogs out around early afternoon. Like normal they raced out the door, Lilah to the back of the yard behind the garage to hunt for lizards (I'll address this in another post) and Ritter to the blueberry bushes on the patio where my mom likes to hang out and admire her hard work.

Except instead of hanging around her legs, Ritter darted into a tightly clustered grouping of blueberry bushes adjacent to the open garage. He was nosing after something, but I just figured it was a lizard that he wouldn't be able to catch. So I headed on back to where Lilah was to check on her progress when Ritter emerged from the bushes with something in his mouth.

"Aaaah! Drop it Ritter!" I said in that freaked out kind of tone.

Ritter did the equivalent of "ptooey" and ran in excitement to the back where Lilah was.

I had been quite wrong. Not only had he caught what he had been nosing after, but it was no lizard. Ritter had managed to catch a young possum, no bigger than a huge rat. He must have a soft mouth because he didn't puncture the possum, nor did it look injured. It did however look dead, as possums are known to do in the face of opposition.

In all the commotion of trying to round up the dogs, my mom yelling for Ritter and my brother trying to corral Lilah, Lilah zoomed past and actually stepped on the poor possum. I still believe that she had no idea what was going on and was just running around in the frenzy. She's really not the type to help a situation. Me, being the calm collected one of the group, ran off to fetch a container to cover the possum with until we got the dogs settled inside.

If you're imagining this scene in all its frantic glory, you can understand why my neighbor actually stuck his head out of his second story window to stare at us. I tried to ignore him.

Once we had it secured in a container in the shade with some water and a little fruit, we decided to let it go at dusk in my grandma's backyard (no dogs). After about an hour it too, had calmed down and was actually sleeping from all the stress and daylight. Up until that point I had stayed outside with it to make sure it didn't go anywhere. It mostly just hissed at me and opened its mouth. Well, no harm in going inside for a moment to get a drink and check on the dogs.

I got back outside just in time to see it climbing out of the container and wandering back into the garage. So much for that plan of releasing it at my grandma's. Hopefully though it learned its lesson to only wander outside at night.