Adding to My Resume

When I look back and take stock of all the skills I have gained by being a stay-at-home mom, I feel kind of accomplished!  I just never expected that I'd do anything to prepare myself for a career in wildlife removal.

With a face only a mother (or our 3 older children) could love.

So about a month ago, I started to suspect we had a mammal in the garage.  It was after dark and I needed something from the garage, when I flipped on the light, I saw a tail disappear into some stored items.  Yay.  Rob set up the trap with a piece of bread and peanut butter and assured me if something was there, it would be in the trap the next morning.  It wasn't and I began to doubt my vision.

But...A week later while Rob was in Haiti, I was doing laundry I discovered the garage smelled like something had died there!  We searched the garage and did not find a body, but we did find...ugh...poop.  Definitely not a phantom mammal.  And after IDing the poo we were pretty sure we were looking for North America's only marsupial - an opossum.

Top two are bowfin fish.

We reset the trap with more PB and even got a footprint in a cornstarch path we'd made, but no opossum in the trap.  Then we tried wet dog food and apples without success.  Then we added chicken bones and cat food.  Although the trap was so sensitive I nearly lost a finger trying to set it, the animal got in and out with the food without making it trigger.  Next, I broke up a piece of bowfin fish that Rob and Caleb brought home from fishing and placed it so the critter had to step on the trigger pad.

This morning - we had an opossum!  It was a baby - about the size of a kitten - and despite barring it teeth and making itself as fierce as possible, it melted the kids hearts.  They quickly got to work drawing it.  They named it "Bowfin" after the fish that caught it.

Annalise

Caleb

Natalie

Rob wasted no time getting it out of our vicinity!

Saying goodbye!

You can see in this picture that it pushed the back door open on its own and got out, for some reason it did not try this trick in our vehicle! 

It disappeared into the woods and didn't look back.  The kids are hopeful that it will meet a new opossum family, but it's just as likely to become part of a python's diet!

Not everyone was happy upon our return:

Annalise

Natalie