I couldn't tell if our opossum was unusually savvy or just lazy. The traps had been set for a week and a half and other than a few neighborhood tabbies we'd caught nothing. In fact, the word must be out to the cats, because we haven't even had one of those in days.
We'd discovered the sole entry point, a gap in the eaves over our guest bedroom. A trellis joins the roofline there and abuts a tree in the yard, so it would appear he (or she, but somehow I'm sensing it's a "he") climbs the tree, traverses the trellis and enters the house. Several times we had heard it making a commotion in that vicinity as it shimmied it's way in or out, but of course now that the path was mined with traps, the opossum seemed to be laying low. Maybe he'd figured it out, I thought, but Jerry quickly disabused me of that notion...
"Nah. Opossums are dumber than a bag of toast..."
I hadn't heard that particular expression before.
"If he'd come out, he be in a trap. He hasn't come out."
This seemed to baffle Jerry, and Jerry doesn't like to be baffled. He had to come out to eat, Jerry said. I suggested maybe he had stocked up, like at WalMart. But once again Jerry said that was unlikely.
I like Jerry. We've bonded, somewhat, over the opossum. Jerry takes a lot of pride in his work, and this particular varmint has vexed him. To the point where he seems to be getting a little... obsessed. Shades of "Moby Dick". He comes by every other day and tries to come up with some new trick or configuration. As the days have passed without success, Jerry seems to be taking the whole thing a little personal.
Jerry is very devoted to his work, especially since he does the bulk of it in LA. He makes the 300 mile roundtrip every single day. Now that's dedication. Jerry's is a "no kill" operation, which was important to me. As much as I want the opossum out of the house, I didn't want any blood on my hands.
"I trap them and then I release them far from Bakersfield."
That sounds nice. I wish that would happen to me. That me be the only way I ever leave this godforsaken town.
Jerry thought perhaps the opossum had left, but I told him we still hear it every night. Through Jerry's detective work we've determined that the opossum now lives somewhere over the dining room. He uses the area over the family room as his toilet, mostly, although he doesn't seem to be a stickler about it since the whole attic is pooped. And the area over the master bedroom is apparently the disco, where the opossum parties down with the rats into the wee hours. Like last night.
I haven't actually, physically, been up in the attic. I'm a big guy, and "graceful" has never been a word used to describe me. The thought of crashing through the ceiling into a pile of opossum shit has kept me limited to peering into the abyss from the safety of a ladder at the crawlspace door.
But all that is going to change tomorrow. Jerry says tomorrow we're going to "kick it up a notch". He's going to move the traps into the attic and he wants me to come along...
"It'll be fun."
I'll bet.
