The harrowing night of the opossum yielded to the treacherous morn of the opossum. In other words, when I got up this morning, he was still in the driveway. He hadn't moved since that rolling over that I noticed at 9 PM last night, so I decided that he had to be dead or extremely stupid. What opossum lies in the same place for that long, especially when there's very bright sunshine and a barking dog in the neighbor's yard.
So I called Animal Control, and they told me that they don't deal with wildlife so I'd need to call a pest control company. Great. So I called the office to alert them to the fact that I was going to have to figure out how to get rid of a opossum before I could come in. Fortunately, Sharon reminded me that my driveway was really the alley, so he was technically a opossum in the street. Lo and behold, the phone book actually has a listing under Public Works labeled "dead animals in the street." I called them, and they said they'd send someone over. That crazy critter was out of my way in 10 minutes. All hail Public Works!
Sharon says that the lesson we have learned here is that if opossums die in your yard, get a shovel or rake and shove them into the street so that you don't have to deal with them.
I know it's heartless of me to think not of the poor soul of the opossum. In his last moments of life, I threw rocks at him and wished him ill. I am currently punishing myself for this evil by building a memorial in the driveway, er, alley. I believe a large stone marker and memorial tree would be best, but I'll have to get city approval first and the city hall people didn't sound too pleasant when I talked to them about this shrine.
Posted Friday, 24-Aug-2007 17:09:16 PDT
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