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I’m not a fan of opossums.  They are overgrown rats with a bad toupee.

They’re habitual liars.  They have no sense of time.  They love the night life . . . they like to boogie . . . in my backyard at night . . .yeah (adapted from a cheesy 70’s song).

It was 2:30 in the morning when the opossum showed up in my backyard, and apparently he had an attitude to go along with his bad toupee.  To my knowledge, I was sleeping soundly when my dogs began barking and growling as if they were entangled in a death match with an intruder.  It was one of those moments when you are in deep sleep, and something so loud breaks the silence that you sit up with eyes wide open, but not really awake.  I reached for my glasses, but decided not to get my gun and one bullet (Barney Fife is my mentor), until I assessed the situation.

After slowly walking through the kitchen, I turned on our porchlight and peered out the window of our backdoor.  And there was the opossum, surrounded by my two dogs–Coco and Smokey.  Vicious sounding, I know (come to think of it, I think Captain and Tennille’s original stage names were Coco and Smokey). Nonetheless, the dogs wouldn’t relent, and neither would the opossum.  He was obviously beyond the point of playing dead.

I did what any dog-owner would do at 2:30 in the morning–yelled at the dogs with my inside voice.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried that in a similiar situation, but it doesn’t work.  So, I took drastic measures.  I found a grapefruit.  You see, my thought process was that if I could throw it at the opossum, it would scare him enough to cause him to run, and my dogs to think that playtime was over.  That was, of course, if the opossum didn’t like grapefruit.  If he had been a grapefruit lover, I would have had to break out the grapes; and you just can’t scare a opossum with grapes (according to Wikipedia).

So, picked up the grapefruit, and it was oily . . . because it was rotten.  After opening the door, I stepped out onto the back porch, rared back, and let the grapefruit . . . slip right out of my grip.  The next thing I knew it hit the fence, far from the opossum; but the sound was so loud that it scared the opossum, the dogs, and even me.  Porch lights suddenly came on at every house that surrounded ours, and I wasn’t appropriately dressed for the occasion.

But, the opossum left, and I got rid of a rotten grapefruit–two things that desperately needed to go.

You may be wondering what the point of the story is, and honestly there isnt’ one.  I’m just not a fan of opossums . . . or rotten grapefruit.