Beekissed and Miss Jayne made me snort my coffee. Wow!
My first close encounter with a possum was as a young teen. Bad winter even for n. central Indiana. Was walking up to the front steps where the garbage cans had been set out for collection and as I pass next to the cans, this giant he possum rears up and snarly hisses at my face. I swear in my memory this thing was unreal huge, 3 feet tall, all teeth and at eye level. Turns out it had forced its way into the crawl space and tore into the home's heating ducts running in the floors. My little brother had been feeding it through the floor vent for weeks - his pet! Ahhh!
Of course there's nothing like walking out to the patio after dinner to pick up the burnt tray of cookies (where I'd laid the heavily smoking tray on the grill) and finding a big possum sitting there pretending I couldn't see it for all its worth. That was funny.
Or being woken in the wee hours by the full-throated battle cry of all three cats because one nosed open the back door. The cats stayed puffed up and growly for an hour.
Needless to say, my coop get locked tight at night.
I think I need a .22...