Tom and the Possum of Death.

This is one of my favorite stories I like to share about my Dad. He nearly murders me every time I bring it up, so because I like to live on the edge, I am going to put it in my blog.

I will start out by saying, this will be a lot funnier if you know my father, but it's still pretty dang funny if you don't.

You know how when you are a little girl, you just know your daddy is going to be there to protect you from everything bad, right? You come to trust that as long as this man is in your presence you're gonna be JUST FINE, right?

Maybe??

One evening, my sister Ellie was having Dad look at something on her car. I was there talking to them in the driveway at Dad's house. So, it's about dusk, and it's getting darker, and all of the sudden, one of us looked over and saw this...shall we say, 'creature' walking across the circle drive...and we all kind of squint to see it, was it a cat?? NO!! IT'S A POSSUM!!! Now I'm sorry, those might be one of God's ugliest rat-like creatures, and Ellie and I were OUT OF THERE!! We start screaming and take off on a dead sprint to the garage, thinking Dad will take care of the unwelcome visitor, right?

All of the sudden, I realize that there are footprints behind me, and I look back to see my Dad's panicked eyes and his legs sprinting as fast as he could screaming for Ellie to "CLOSE THE DOOR!! CLOSE THE DOOR!!" (meaning the garage door which was open), and so Ellie flies in to the garage followed by me and Dad and is looking for the button, and pretty soon the garage door goes down...and we all just stood there for a minute looking at each other like, 'what the hell just happened??"...and one of us said, "Is it still out there??" So, ever so gently, we peer out the smaller door...my head on the bottom, Ellie's head above mine, and Dad's head on top. We see that the possum has barely made it to the edge of the driveway, probably a mere 6 feet from where we originally saw it...(they really aren't that fast, you know.) :) Anyway, I look at Dad, and just bust out laughing...and he said, "What?? It was licking my heels!!" He swears to this day that it was indeed, licking his heels.

So, like the true cowards we were, we stayed in the house until we were sure he was gone, or at least gone from our view, before we emerged again.

My Dad still thinks the only good possum is a dead possum...but he also swears that from time to time, he can still hear the scraping of claws on the pavement of that particularly horrible possum from that night, and marvels at the fact that we made it out alive.

I'm not going to say that I thought differently of my Dad after that night, but let's just say, if I want to be protected from THAT type of predator in the future, I will make sure that it is my husband that I look to, and not my Dad!!

Licking his heels...REALLY?