last night, i let our dogs out for the last time before bed at around 10:30. and as i was letting them in, i thought to myself “self, you should go outside and close that chicken coop door.” and the exact same time i thought it, i walked into the bedroom and crawled into bed.

zzzzzz…..

around 4am, the dogs and i were awoken by a chicken-y sounding ruckus coming from the backyard. “OH crap!!” i thought to myself, putting on my glasses and runnin to see what the heck was going on, jimmy runnin in front of me to regulate any backyard cat intruders. it was dark, so i couldn’t really see what the eff was up, but i saw one lone chicken kinda hanging out near the patio. the rest were tucked safely into their nesting boxes. and jimmy starts barking like crazy over by our little patch of corn. he’s cornered himself a possum!

OH SNAPS!!! i thought… what do i do, what do i do… if jimmy engages with this thing who knows what the heck kinda diseases he’ll pick up. what do i do… and i spot the hose lyin near me. it’s good on two levels – if i spray the hose jimmy will back off because he hates most watery things, and hopefully it’ll scare the possum away to boot. so i set that thing to FULL STUN, and i started lettin that possum have it. he took off into our corn patch looking for cover, and found none since i just walked over and sprayed directly at him from my side of the little fence. there’s a big ol’ star jasmine plant in that patch, too, and as i was spraying i saw that plant start rustling something fierce, like our freaky little middle of the night visitor was making a hasty getaway!

i ushered the stunned chicken (one of the Doublemint Twins) on the patio back into the coop and went back to bed. she’s got a tiny bit of a limp this morning, but she may have just landed wrong coming out of the coop. we’ll keep an eye on her, but i’m pretty sure she’ll be all right!

here’s what i wanna know – why aren’t possums ever cute when you see em in real life? they’re never all kitten/puppy/fluffy “hi i’m adorable pick me up and love me!” like this possum here:

no. possums are never cute like that. it’s one of the harsh rules of nature. when you run into a possum at 4am, they always look more like this:

if anyone knows why that is, i think you should share with the class. also, i can’t be completely sure my possum last night was wearing a top hat. i was pretty tired when i was chasing him off, so he might have actually been wearing a monocle, not a snappy hat.