Did I ever tell you about the time...

WARNING: The end of the story is not for the squeamish, although I'll try to not be too gross. So if you're pregnant... maybe skip this post.

Rewind my life a few years - back to when I was pregnant with our first baby, and we lived in Florida.

One night, I came home from work (I was a first grade teacher) and was soooo exhausted that I went to bed right after dinner. Not long after, hubby is shaking me hard and telling me to get up because he needs my help. I'm thinking that this had better be doggone good to interrupt this pregnant woman's sleep!

He takes me into the kitchen and asks me to help him look for a possum he just scared.

A what???

Yes, a possum. Aka the opossum. (And did you know it's the only marsupial in North America? Just some trivia for ya.)

He had heard some knocking around in the cabinet that held our pots and pans and had immediately thought, "Great, we've got a mouse." He opened the door, to find a possum sitting right up against the cabinet door, staring at him. It was so NOT what he expected that he slammed the door shut. So now he needed me to help find it.

Well, we "chased" the thing around the hiding places and crevices of our kitchen. I say "chased" because he'd run in and around the cabinets, finding places to get through that we didn't know existed, and at one point, he was behind the stove, climbing up the mechanical whatsits of it. Somehow, hubby hooked its tail and tried to pull it off the stove, but this thing had more of a tenacious grip than two desperate women fighting over a blouse on sale. We couldn't nab him and soon he disappeared into the cabinets for the rest of the night.

It didn't appear to be full-grown, so hubby and I figured that after that scary experience, the little guy wouldn't be back.

We figured wrong.

A few nights later, I was sitting on the floor, watching my hubby play a computer game. Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw some movement. When I turned, there was the possum. Sitting in the middle of my living room, about a foot or so from my knee (I was sitting somewhat Indian style). Looking at me. With those big, black eyes. Just looking at me.

Normally, I'm not a screamer. If you come up behind me and grab my sides, hoping to get a girly scream, you'll be disappointed. I might yell. Or jump. But no screaming.

Until that possum was that close to my knee! I mean, come on. How often does a wild animal do that in your living room? Hubby was a bit peeved with me, because that possum turned tail (groan, pun police are arriving) and ran down the hallway and into our bedroom.

Oh.great.

Hubby cornered the wee fella in the closet... but NOW what? How do we get rid of this thing? We had no guns at the time, and even if we HAD, do you know what a gun of any sort would do to a small possum at that close of range? Then hubby says, "Remember those homemade arrows your dad bought in Uganda?"

Uh oh. You know what's coming next, don'tcha? *gross alert*

Yes, he stabbed the possum a few times, because folks, we had no other choice. It was around midnight, and no conservation agent is gonna come save you that late at night from a young possum. Then he took it outside. I don't know how, because to be honest, I was hiding in another room, covering my ears and squeezing my eyes really tight. But he took it outside and beat it to death. Not pretty. Hubby came in with ... stuff on him, shall we say.

Now, hubby is a hunter. So he's done his share of killing an animal and cleaning it. But there is a world of difference between killing an animal quickly with a gun yards away and then what happened to that poor possum. Hubby was very grossed out about every part of it - the arrow, the beating.

We had wanted to let the fella go, but he obviously wasn't scared of US. He came back, even after we showed we were a threat to him. And we didn't know if he had a disease or what. I was pregnant, and when you know a wild animal isn't scared of you and you have a child to protect (born or unborn), you do what you gotta do.