"There's a Critter in There ..."

As part of the 'War on Lawn' I installed a bog garden in our yard.

It has been a successful project, as can be seen in the image above. Now's the time to winterize it: weeding, cutting stuff back, thinning and transplanting. And mulching. For mulch, we use pine needles. It is a Pinelands bog after all.

We've a pretty good supply of pine needles, easily collected off our main driveway. And we recently gathered up a trashcan full for mulching. With rain in the forecast (a storm that knocked over a couple of dead trees) I put the needles in the garage.

When I went to get the saw to deal with the tree on the deer fence I noticed a few things had been knocked off the shelves. Some small tools a couple of drill bits. "Odd", I recall thinking, wondering if a critter had gotten in? After taking care of the tree I looked around the garage, I didn't find a critter, but I did find (and clean up) the mess above. Yep, something had been, and maybe even still was, in the garage. I opened all the doors so if still there it had an easy exit path.

Next on the todo list was mulching the bog. Something made me hesitate. There was an indentation in the center of the trashcan of pine needles. I suppose I might pushed it in when packing in the pine needles. but my spidey sense was tingling. And with good reason.

When I reached in to grab some needles I felt something. This:

Something with fur. Something that did not react when I touched it (a clue). I got a stick and pushed the needles out of the way, ready to jump and run at any second.

And I uncovered an ear. An ear that belonged to a Virginia Opossum. Playin' possum.

I put the trashcan of pine needles out in the yard, on its side so Oppie could easily exit at its leisure. And I put some peanut butter on some branches in front. Oppie, and the peanut butter, were gone the next morning.

I still haven't mulched the bog though.

🐀  🐀  🐀

Many years ago, my youngest sister, who was probably five or six years old at the time, came running into the house yelling, "There's a rat in the garage! There's a rat in the garage." Dad, me, and my siblings headed out to see. There was a critter there, in a box of ceiling tiles left over from some home remodeling project recently completed. My dad, a city boy, had no idea what to do. So he called the police. The officer arrived, took one look at the 'rat' and started laughing. "That's an opossum", he told us. And with that the critter in the garage went from being vermin to eliminate to a guest to welcome. I remember we put a plate of fruit in the garage for it to eat. It just played possum the whole time. After a while we all got bored and wandered off. And once we were gone it did the same.