Possumbly

We haven't seen one of these creatures up live and personal since ... well, I can't remember when.  So it was quite a surprise when this one came ambling across the backyard and hunkered up next to the house like it was warming itself next to a campfire.  It was cold and snowing at the time; perhaps that is exactly what the little varmint was doing.  But it isn't something we're used to seeing here in the suburbs.  Most of the time when we catch a glimpse of these furry little things, it is when they have become a silent, motionless lump of inanimate flesh (and not because they are playing "possum") after an encounter with a high-speed vehicle on a two-lane road that just happens to run perpendicular to the main thoroughfare of the woodland residents.  Somewhen the night before, or perhaps in the early morning hours, someone came over the crest of a little hill and noticed the sparkle of those black, beady eyes as they popped up out of nowhere in the middle of the road, right before that sickening *crunch* when the driver realized it wasn't just a trick of the headlights, or the reflection of a piece of glass on the road, but the last moments of some unlucky animal's life.

Up close and personal, they are not the prettiest animals in the world.  Kind of like a huge, misshapen rat with a head that looks swollen from a few rounds of boxing, ambling across the grass like it's had too much dandelion wine, with steady, unblinking eyes as though it had some dark, secret purpose.

This one's purpose was, apparently, to snuggle up next to our house in a vain attempt to get warm.  We tracked his steps through the basement window, watching in growing alarm as he maintained his wobbly, unwavering pace all the way across the yard until he stopped against the side of the house, just beyond our field of view.  I thought for a few moments about letting the cats out to deal with it, but then my brain kicked in and it occurred to me that a rabid rodent was more likely to hug a house than a reasonable one, and it wouldn't pay to have such a disease transferred from the non-domestic to the domestic; so instead I ventured forth to the backyard myself, armed to the teeth with my charm and wit (and a few Tarzan yells I'd learned from Johnny Weissmuller) and prepared to do battle.  But the nimble rodent had evidently overheard my plot from behind the basement window.

He was gone.