Yeah, those Possums in the US are fugly baskets, the ones we have here are kind of cute? The problem though, was that the momma possum found an entrance point into the roof of my house directly above my bedroom and would crawl across the top of my ceiling, and then it and the baby possum would squeeze down into the wall cavity directly behind my head.
Brushtail+Possum+David+Cook by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
I immediately thought of the scene from "The Exorcist" where Reagan's mom would hear scratching and thumping in the ceiling, and then I wondered if perhaps the diazepam, tramadol, phenergen 25's and ginger joes were making me hallucinate that a demon had entered Chez Terry? But no, after a couple of days of being woken at dawn by these hairy tree rats I did a search and couldn't work out where the hell they were getting in? No loose or broken roof tiles, and everything appeared to be in order?
This went on for a few weeks, every second or third day there's be a hell of a racket above me with lots of thumping and scratching so one hot afternoon after downing a couple of bottles of Ginger Joe I had the wonderful idea to climb up on the roof again, and this time I noticed a piece of loose concrete in the drain in the "Valley" of my roof that must have been put in by the builders of the house to block birds, but was no match for a big fcuking possum.
I climbed back down, located a couple of "half brick" sized pavers which are quite heavy, and shoved them into the gap where the possums were squeezing thru. Next morning around 6am, I was woken by the frantic scratching of the momma possum trying to dislodge the pavers, to no avail. I yelled some encouragement to her, but she couldn't shift them. I did think about walking into my front yard and throwing rocks at her or shooting her up the arse with my .22 BSA air rifle, but decided that me barring them entry was punishment enough, and was happy to see that the bricks were still there and the possums had pissed off.
And I didn't fall off the roof which just goes to show what a performance enhancing drug alcohol is. If I wasn't drunk, I would never have wandered around the roof of my house. One of the most common injuries treated at hospital emergency wards around the world is old guys over 60 falling off ladders. If those guys had chugged a couple of strong ginger beers before climbing up those ladders, they'd still be alive today!
