I. Do. Not. Like. Wildlife.

I am not a nature lover. Yes, flowers are pretty and, yes, it's nice to hear songbirds, but, in our case, living by the lake, nature mostly consists of terrifying wildlife. From snakes in our house, to skunks breezing through the backyard, to black widows that live in our french drains, it's always just a question of "what creature will we see next?" Well, last night we got an answer: a possum.

It was hanging on Mark's bike that hangs from the ceiling in our garage - mere inches from the door inside to the kitchen. We have no idea how it got in there, but it was apparently in there long enough to go #2 in a corner of the garage. Sick.

So what do you do when you find a possum in your garage at 10:30 at night? Well, after you freak out, you call someone - anyone - who can help get it out. The 24-hour vet told us to just shut the garage door for the night and then leave it open tomorrow so the animal could escape, but since I had visions of the animal picking the lock with its disgusting tail, using its nasty hands to open the door, and sniffing us out in our bedroom with it's repulsive nose, my next step was the police. They help people in trouble, right? So I call them and the dispatcher informed me that they're not equipped to handle "wildlife unless it's inside the home." Okay, but my garage is home to our cars and bikes and stuff, and it's connected to the house, so this counts, right? Anyway, I talk to the dispatcher while Mark gets advice from his friends to "chop it up with an ax." (Mark needs some new friends.) The dispatcher then tried to walk Mark through the motions of using a broom to shove it into a garbage can, but I guess he sensed our terror and agreed to personally come out after his shift and help us Cityfolk.

So this guy comes over at about 11:30, puts on his gloves, picks the possum up by the tail, and shoves it in some crappy Oster Blender box that Mark found. He puts the box in his car, drives to the lake, releases it on some dirt road, and calls us to tell us that it won't be visiting us again. (He did, however, earlier note that there was more than likely a mother and the rest of the litter around somewhere - not in our house, specifically, but more like our yard - so it was probably only out of physical necessity that we managed to fall asleep last night.)

The moral? Lock your doors and keep your children safe; you never know what's coming for you.