"You get a big stick and poke it"

In the words of Ernest T. Bass, that is how you get a possum out of a hole. Now the question is how do you get one out of your pool and your garage?

A few weeks back TP noticed we had a new pet living in the back yard. A baby possum had decided to start hanging out. In fact we were having dinner with friends outside one evening and this new pet decides to walk right beside our little dinner party. This prompted one of our friends to discuss fishing dead animals out of his pool.

The very next morning I was looking out the window and noticed something in the pool that I couldn't identify. I went out and found our new pet was in the pool, unfortunately he hadn't signed up for his swimming lessons at the Y and was on the bottom of the pool. Not sure if he decided to get some exercise or was just running from our ferocious cat, but either way he might as well be swimming the English Channel. I told TP to look on the bright side, if he had fallen in the hot tub we would've had possum stew!

Monday night I open the kitchen door into the garage to take out the recycling. Trotting across the garage floor was a relative of the bad swimmer. Of course being the chicken butt that I am TP has to come and proceed to track him down. In order to prevent him from running out from the stuff he was behind and hiding someplace else, TP constructed what looked like a cattle shoot out of my scrap lumber. I armed myself with a rake being that he weighed maybe 2 pounds I had to be prepared. TP chased him out and of course he runs around the cattle shoot and heads under tools, chased from there he comes directly at me. Armed with my rake and honed safari skills I scooped him up and tossed him out of the garage, (I may have wet myself a little). The little ugly furry fella scurried away.

After all this all I could do was compare myself and my rake to Ernest T and his big stick....