We Shared Our Home with a Wild Possum

I hate rodents, and it doesn't matter if it's a small mouse, large rat or an overweight possum. There is no way that I would have willingly shared my home with one, but at the time we had no choice. At first, we didn't know what was living in our house; we merely knew that something that shouldn't have been there was. I always stayed up later than everyone else, since I didn't typically arrive home from work until after midnight, and I'd always hear a scratching sound coming from beneath me. It's not like I was going to go and investigate, though, because first of all, we didn't have a basement in our rental house, and secondly, even if we did, I don't think that I would have been brave enough to try and find out the source of the sound.

I heard the sound on a regular basis and when I informed my landlord, he claimed that he had a guy check it out but didn't find anything. How could he not find anything? Surely I wasn't just imagining the sound, was I? If I was, then I was just as mentally unstable as the patients that I worked with at the psychiatric hospital. To prove to myself-and everyone else-that I wasn't imagining things, I stayed up late one night that I didn't have to work, and as soon as I heard the sound, I woke my husband. Irritated and groggy, he came into the living room where the noise was loudest, and heard the sound for himself. He was immediately awake and no longer grouchy as we tried to figure out what the heck was underneath our house.