Opossum V Dog

The Puppy is the dog I rescued from a broken down Peugeot in the mountains of Southern Spain. She is weird and awkward and anti-social and that makes me love her even more because she’s just like me.

I Look Like My Dog

They say a dog and its human often morph into the same being, separated into two bodies and it’s true. Not only do we have the same personality, but we sort of look alike. She’s like Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriend in that one episode, where, depending on the light, she’s either gorgeous or hideous. Some people think I’m ridiculously gorgeous and some people think I’m only ridiculously attractive. My Puppy, just like me, is almost too beautiful for this world. I shower her with brushes and pets and gentle face kisses on an almost hourly basis. I’m like a crazy cat lady only my cat is a weird dog and I have a pair of hairy balls. So it took a lot for me to ignore her for the last two days. But I did. I had to.

Opossum v Dog

What happened to cause me to ignore the one great love of my life? An opossum happened. My life’s one great hate.

I let her out the door at ten pm and saw her bolt down the stairs like a tee-shirt from a tee-shirt cannon at the sort of event where costumed men walk around shooting tee-shirts out of cannons. By the time I made it downstairs I saw Puppy going full spaz (and you never, ever, go full spaz) and a pair of glowing, blind eyes, razor sharp teeth and a two inch bald tail. My dog had cornered an opossum.

scared puppy picture

Why were you not a coward when I needed you to be a coward?

“Puppy no, help, no, Karen Help Me! Hey, NO NO NO!!!” I calmly commanded the dog. The diseased demon devil somehow managed to scamper up the wall in a split second while my dog growled and whined and I screamed for my wife to come and save us all.

Instead of burning through the ether and going back to the depths of hell where it belongs, the fugly, rabid fucker ran back and forth along the wall, hissing and spitting opossum Ebola/rabies/AIDS/swine-flu at us while my hapless dog followed along underneath like a dog chasing a mechanical rabbit at a greyhound track.

I finally got the Puppy to come in. Every ten minutes I peeked out the door, flashlight and butcher knife in hand, motorcycle helmet on head, I saw the little bastard still there baring its teeth and hissing bloody murder. I went to sleep at midnight and dreamt of hordes of murderous opossums pillaging and raping their way across the lands until they ended up in California where they started a cult and got a movie deal.

Why Am I So Afraid Of Such A “Cute” Little Mammal?

When I was sixteen or seventeen I was partying in the woods. When a girl led me up a hill, atop a small clearing, I couldn’t believe my luck. I was half out of my mind on alcohol, smoke and teenage hormones and just when the going on good, I saw a bunch of small, bright lights coming towards us up the hill. I alerted the girl by removing my tongue from her mouth. We both looked on, too high to move, as what looked like six, then eight, synchronized lights made their bouncy way towards us.

Then the small, glowing, orbs hit the clearing and the moonlight revealed four opossums scampering towards us, making mewling sounds and grinding their teeth. I screamed louder than you’d think possible, threw my beer in their general direction with a distinctly girly arm and ran as fast and as far as I could which wound up being in a part of our bad neighborhood made worse by the fact that I was from the other part of our bad neighborhood. I made it out without being murdered by small boys or small rodents but an important part of my mind died that night all the same.

Opossum showing teeth

Well sure, it looks cute now…

Opossum Ebola

The Puppy needs to learn not to fight the things she doesn’t like. She needs to learn to ignore those things and stay as far away from them as possible and pretend with all her might that they don’t even exist. I’ve already forgiving her but I’ll wait a few more days before I resume kissing her so I can be sure she doesn’t have opossum Ebola/rabies/AIDS/swine-flu.

  11 comments for “Opossum V Dog

  1. October 15, 2014 at 12:45 pm

    There is nothing cute about that rodent. I’m with you. I fear them.

    Two weeks ago I discovered what I thought was a rat in a trap near my storage shed, but it was a opossum. And still alive. It tried to play dead, but then it would twitch its ear, or scoot the trap to try getting under the shed. I hollered for someone to clobber it with the shovel, and a three-hundred pound man living in my landlady’s house who wanted to avoid the whole thing as much as I, did the brave thing…he scooped it up with the shovel and plunged it in a bucket of water to drown. Ye gads. I’m still having nightmares.

    • October 15, 2014 at 7:18 pm

      Aww, I don’t want it to die! I just want them to never have been born, to never have evolved in the first place. The stuff of nightmares.

      Thanks Diane!

  2. October 15, 2014 at 4:21 pm

    It seems they’ve lost their fear of humans. Not surprising if a lad of military age runs away from them instead of standing his ground and fighting. I suggest you round up a posse and go on a possum hunt.

    • October 15, 2014 at 7:20 pm

      The problem on the beach is that they literally don’t have anywhere else to go. I guess they are basically trapped on this island now, wondering between houses like kids on Halloween night. Poor bastards.

      Thanks GB!

  3. October 18, 2014 at 12:12 pm

    Well howdy, Scott. Long time no read. I just found your site, read you’d written a book, so ordered it, and looking forward to reading it.

    How have I been? Damn glad you asked. I had trouble logging on to WordPress, as I’d forgotten my password. I emailed WordPress, and asked them what my password was. I got an email back saying, “Who the fuck are you?” I emailed them back asking, “Well, who the fuck are you asking me who the fuck am I?” This went on for a couple of weeks, after which we came to an agreement we’d tell each other who the fuck we were, and I finally got my password. I sent all the emails to congress, telling them this is what can happen when two side actually cooperate with each other, and they could use it as a model for political expediency. I’m still waiting for a reply.

    There’s been some real highs and lows in my life, the highs basically being when I visited a friend of mine in Turkey Creek , Colorado, recently. He made some homemade chile (no beans), but failed to inform he he laced it with a couple of crushed-up pot pills. The chile was excellent, as were the ethereal naked angels that kept flitting in and out of the living room. The main problem was my right foot would start tapping anytime someone mentioned treats. I told my friend that was really weird. He went out to the kitchen and came back laughing and said he’s accidentally subbed a can of Alpo for canned meat he added to the chile. My friend’s such a jokester.

    I’ll catch up on your blog. I breezed through a couple of posts, and you seem to be getting better with age. Looking forward to in-depth analysis.
    Later,
    Jammer

    • October 22, 2014 at 8:24 am

      Hi Jammer. I’d just thought about you last week for some reason. I even went over to your old site to check the status of it’s defunctness and saw that it was still in complete defunct mode. I’m happy to see that you’re still bouncing around like a happy baby boy on these here internets.

      My wife and I just got back from Colorado ourselves. We went in August and there was a giant bear, 14 elk and a pot candy bar that never got tasted. -More to come on that.

      Thanks man, I hope you enjoy it and it’s great to hear from you after all these years!

      Thanks Jammer!

  4. October 19, 2014 at 6:23 pm

    My experience with the dreaded possum started with our dogs going bananas. One had jumped the fence, which is six feet high, ad was running around like a dog on rabies. I went outside to calm him down, finding out my flashlight had a dead battery, so I was doing all this in basically total darkness. The dog, Cody, wanted to play, which I did for awhile, hoping it’d calm him down so I could get him back in his area. It worked, and I went back to bed.

    About a half hour later, the same thing happened, so I got up, led him back to his area, and started walking back to my room. I tripped over something that looked like a rock. We don’t have any rocks in our back yard. I flipped it with my foot over to a sliver of light escaping from my room. It turned out to be a possum. I though it was dead, as Cody is a big dog, standing over five feet when he jumps up on me. The possum was gone in the morning, so it made it.

    A couple nights later the same thing happened, and I ignored it. Next morning there was a dead possum hanging on the fence, with Cody looking at me and grinning from ear to ear. He tried it with a turtle, but the turtle won: Cody’s nose was in sorry shape for a week.

    • October 22, 2014 at 8:31 am

      I wonder what it is about them that inspire so much hate? Even my dog hates them and my dog loves everything. She even met e manatee she became best mates with.

      That’s what I was afraid of. I don’t want the Puppy learning to kill things as there are too many animals out here. Also I didn’t want to see her ruin her beautiful face. Also, who knows what kind of disease that thing carried. Also I hate death and dead things.

      I’m glad the turtle made it out alive.

      Thanks Jammer!

  5. October 22, 2014 at 12:04 pm

    The other morning, I went out, after both dogs got out, and found a desiccated catfish just lying there in the yard. Cody was lying by it, grinning as only a dog can do. The bastard wouldn’t tell me where he got it, why it was desiccated, why it ended up in our back yard, and why he was just lying by it. There’s way more to dogs than they’re letting us know about.

    • October 22, 2014 at 6:51 pm

      Jesus, what does your dog get up to? Fishing while you’re asleep… quite a life! You need a doggy cam.

      Thanks Jammer!

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