Critter in the Cellar

Last night I was puttering around the basement (which I haven't done while I've been working on other household chores), and I noticed a large poop in a corner. Larger than the cats generally do - about the size of a small dog's feces. I cleaned it up, but didn't see any others, and chalked it up to naughty feline territorial marking. This morning, however, four large poops decorated the couch down there, and I realized with growing dismay that a number of things had been knocked off top shelves -- a metal pitcher of dried flowers, a lamp, two small speakers.

Obviously, we had acquired a guest.  In retrospect, the newly shrill cat-shrieking fights in the cellar, their interest in a specific pile of boxes they hadn't every looked at before, Fred's abrupt switch of sleeping-spot preferences, the recently increased appetite (the need to refill the food bowl twice in one day and the water bowl emptying fast) ... suddenly, it struck me that the cats had been interacting with something in the basement for a couple of days.

You can see in the photo that it turned out to be a possum (ironic that it chose to hide on top of a game named "Mouse Trap", which itself was stacked upon "Whack-A-Mole"). It was about Tasha's size, despite the relatively huge poops. The critter thought he'd found Nirvana -- warm and dry just as the weather is turning to Autumn, a regular supply of food, and clean water.  He got in through the cat door.  Until last month, I've been sleeping underneath the cat door/window -- effective hindrance to scare off animals who don't belong (I woke more than once with a raccoon or stray cat on the platform, but they scurried out if I moved). I don't live down there anymore, so there's no guard, except for cats. And I take it that cats aren't much of a deterrent.

I didn't find him myself. After my epiphany, I calmly cleaned up the poops, holding a large stick in one hand and making loud noises to make my mere 5'4" frame scary. I unemotionally latched the cat door so nothing could enter (but things can leave). I coolly sprinkled a trail of food from the again-empty food bowl to the cat door, and then carefully sprinkled baking flour along the route so I'd be able to identify who ate what where from paw marks. Then I sedately climbed up the stairs and barricaded the open doorway at the top and called in a professional. And for the next three hours before Tim The Wildlife Professional, was able to get here, I scrubbed the rest of the house until it is immaculate, looking for evidence that any critters might have skulked up those stairs.

A meta-photograph of Tim photographing the possum -- you can see it on the display of his phone.

Tim is a kind and calm young man who just this morning removed another possum from another basement, and three skunks from a backyard with dogs.  He did not expect to find our possum, given the many many open boxes and dark corners in which it could hide. The plan was to look around, then leave a baited live trap.  However, the critter chose to nap for the day not far from where he had tipped over a lamp, so we found it in about 20 minutes of poking about with a flashlight.  It was a simple job, then, to grab the tail of the possum and lower the critter into the live trap.  Tim's services included cleaning up the mess left on the games (which maybe we want to throw away now) and a couple of other messes that turned up as we were looking.

Tim told me the curious thing about possums is that they have an amazing immune system. They don't get sick; they don't carry rabies; they can be bitten by a rattlesnake with a dose of venom enough to kill a horse and they'll walk away. But then they keel over and die at about three years old. He reckoned ours was about a year -- not born last spring, but not old enough or big enough to have had kits.

As the "home-owner", I had to make the decision whether to have possum released into the backyard, or taken away. County law says that you can't catch and release elsewhere, so "taking it away" means an endless dreamless sleep back at The Wildlife Professional's headquarters.  I am getting hardened: he took the possum away.

Meanwhile, perhaps karma is getting back at me -- I am twitchy and jumpy, mistaking furry mouse toys for beasts and hearing skittering always just around the corner. No way am I going down in that basement again today.