It all started with the screen door

It all started with the screen door to our screen porch.  We keep it propped open so that our two garden cats, Ophelia and Belle, can come in out of the hot sun and get a drink of water from the bowl we have in the screen porch.  The porch encompasses the breezeway between the garage and the house and then wraps around the back of the house, where there is another screen door leading to the backyard, so the only way to get to our back door is through the screen porch.

Upon occasion at night we have surprised a racoon peering into the screen porch, and once I found a box turtle strolling through, and we knew a possum had been making rounds.

I noticed when I took Trixie Lou out the back door during the day she was showing a lot of interest in a small chest of drawers in the porch.  So the other day I pulled open a drawer, expecting to see mouse or rat droppings amongst the peat pots and cloth strips for the May Pole that I keep there.  I briefly saw a snarling mouth of razor sharp teeth before I slammed the drawer shut and ran into the house!  Later that night when my husband came home we ventured forth to flush out the vicious creature, carefully opening the drawer.

Amongst cries of "It's so adorable!" from the girls, and "Don't hurt it!" we tried to get it to leave.  It wouldn't budge.

 Finally a friend came over with her daughter, an airsoft gun, and two intrepid dogs (Trixie Lou, being only a little over a year, was not likely to fair well in a fight with that possum's sharp teeth.  The airsoft gun did not seem to disturb it at all.  Finally some prodding with a hoe handle and the presence of the two dogs motivated it to jump out of the drawer.  After a period of slapstick running and chasing on the part of all the people and dogs (one of which was a huge Anatolian Shepherd), the possum decided to play possum.  Rolling over, with mouth open in a snarling grimace displaying the wicked teeth.  A possum, hissing and snarling, with teeth and claws ready for fight resembles a Tasmanian Devil in some respects -- this is no cute docile small mammal!  Husband then shoveled it up and deposited it in a corner of the yard, from which it later fled.  Hopefully the screen porch has enough dog scent now to  discourage taking up residence, if not visits.

it was dark by now

Of course now the porch is in even greater disarray than it has been, with every drawer pulled out of the chest, all furniture pulled away from the walls, shoes, pots, garden tools strewn every which way from our trying to flush out and stay away from the possum!