Playing (o)possum?

I was enjoying a nice evening in with my husband, watching a movie, and relaxing on the couch when Penny (one of my Jack Russell Terriers) came prancing in with a something in her mouth. Do you remember this post? Well this time, it wasn’t a vole. It was a possum. Or is it opossum? Does anyone know if there is a difference between the two?

Anyway, she has a baby possum in her mouth and I assume it’s dead. All I can say (after I quickly pull my feet onto the couch) is “Penny’s got an animal!!!” I didn’t even want to see what it was at the time because I don’t really like to look at her kills and this one looked bigger than a vole. Courtney comes back into the room (he was in the kitchen, I think) and looks and confirms it’s a possum. I ask if it’s dead and he says, “Yeah,” but then he gets a closer look and sees that it is, in fact, breathing.

I don’t know which is worse. A dead animal or a half-dead animal? Either way, it needed to be taken outside and I wasn’t about to do it. Thankfully, my husband was willing to do his official “man duties” and take the creature outside. He grabbed a few plastic bags from the kitchen and came to pick it up when it started hissing at him! It then sat up and started crawling across our floor!!! I saw it scamper to the corner of the room near the couch and I ran into the other room. I swear, it looked like an R.O.U.S. (Rodent of Unusual Size….Princess Bride people!) except smaller.

Ick.

Long story short (well, it’s not really short anymore, is it?) he scoops it up in a shoe box and puts it in the field across from our house. He checked on it the next day and it was gone. So our little baby possum tricked our killer dog into thinking it was dead by playing….what else?….possum.