Patti and I are fugitives. If that doesn’t make you interested, I don’t know what will. In case this is the first Thoughts from Life you’ve ever read; I’ll briefly explain the situation. Patti (my wife) and I (me/Brian) have adopted an outside cat (Archie). We would let him come into the house, but we have four cats (Scout and her three daughters) already. We’ve had problems with animals taking food and water we left out for Archie. Patti arranged to get a trap. It has been sitting by our porch for several weeks.
One night, I was walking into the backyard after work at about 1:00 am and onto the porch to go in the back door with Archie meowing endlessly. I did my usual checking on the trap to see if anything was in there. My first thought was that the trapdoor wasn’t open as it had been. Looking closer, I saw a furry creature with a giant rat tail. I’ve seen a possum up close before. I took a picture of him through the bars. He was eyeing me with a scared look on his face. Patti and I referred to him as a “he” because trapping a female possum came with possibilities we didn’t want to think about.
I wrote a note for Patti who was sleeping about the possum in the trap. I didn’t want her to discover the possum on her own and freak out. In writing the note, I came across the dilemma of how to spell possum. The official spelling is “opossum.” In the note, I put, “Just so you know, an opossum is in the trap.” Dictionaries indicate the pronunciation is “uh-possum.” I’ve never pronounced it like that, so I questioned the “an opossum” of the sentence. It just points out that even in a note to someone, I can’t write without proper punctuation and grammar. I do the same thing with text messages. Yes, I’m that guy.
In the morning, we had to decide what to do with the possum (yes, I’m back to that spelling). Patti knew it was illegal to relocate a raccoon when we were trying to catch a raccoon we knew was often in the yard. That is why we got the trap. Despite knowing this, Patti wanted to relocate the possum. I had a small apple that I cut up and put in the trap. As the pieces hit the bottom of the trap, the possum’s mouth opened wide. Eventually, I saw him eating the apple pieces. As I got dressed, I hoped Patti would come up with somewhere to take him. You may notice I didn’t say “relocate.”
I picked up the trap with him keeping an eye on me with his mouth open. I put him in the back of Patti’s truck and Patti drove. We still had only a vague idea of where we were going. There were two roads we could think of that had some bushes and other things to hide in. As Patti drove, I looked up whether it was illegal to relocate possums. Without ambiguity, it stated that it was illegal to relocate possums in California. It also mentioned that relocated possums have a slim chance of survival because of competition with other animals already established in the area. Competition ruins everything.
When we got to our undisclosed location, I waited for no traffic. I took the trap out of the truck and hid it with the truck. When I saw no cars again, I took the trap to a place down a little from the road. Patti could see me, but the cars couldn’t. Per Patti’s suggestion, I put some more apples by the trap. I had zip-tied the door on the trap. With wire cutters, I cut the zip ties off and the door opened. The possum ran by the apple pieces. When I looked up, the possum was gone from sight. I put the trap back in the truck and we drove back home. Our life of illegal activities had begun. By the way, Patti informed me that the possum’s name was Steve. Hopefully, Steve found a girlfriend and started a family of his own. Realistically, the possum known for one day as Steve didn’t survive longer than a few days beyond the safety of our porch.
Thoughts from Life 
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