Ollie, we hardly knew ye

Note: this post is a bit earthy 🙂

I walked through waist-high weeds, wet with the morning dew. Soon my pants were soaked, but my trap was coming into view where I had left it the night before, baited with cat food and covered with branches. My pulse quickened as I saw both doors shut and an animal running back and forth. Could it…could it be…?

Alas, just another stupid opossum. I opened the door and it waddled away into the underbrush.

Growing up, one of my favorite books was Rascal by Sterling North. It was a memoir of his life as a largely unsupervised 11yo in rural Wisconsin during WWI. His mother had passed, his two sisters were married and his father was often away on extended business trips. Sterling’s family was Rascal, his pet raccoon. His accounts of their exploits and Rascal’s intelligence and dexterity were riveting to me. I needed to add a raccoon to my menagerie of pets.

I had been trying to catch one with my havahart trap, but had caught everything except a raccoon. Squirrels, rabbits, an indigo snake once, birds, a skunk. But primarily opossums. I finally managed to catch a very small one and decided it would have to do until I got my raccoon; and thus began my lifelong love/hate relationship with North America’s only marsupial.

Ollie, as I dubbed him, was colossally dull-witted. He had five primary modes:

1. Mouth open, hissing
2. Mouth open, drooling
3. Mouth open, hissing and drooling
4. Mouth closed, staring blankly
5. Eating; head back, eyes mostly closed, mouth open and food spilling out.

I did my best, but I could not teach Ollie the simplest thing. Compared to Rascal, who trundled along the dining room table, lifted the lid to the sugar bowl and helped himself to a sugar cube, Ollie was a poor also-ran. I finally let him go.

Years later, Ollie II came into my life. My wife and I were newlyweds and living in an apartment. My brother called. He had found a baby opossum, would I like it? Ehh, perhaps this one would be more intelligent.

He was not. Same five modes, and unlike Ollie I, this one was kept inside; and his one distinguishing trait was his ability to escape from his cardboard box. We’d find him behind the couch, at the back of the closet, under the bed. Finally he escaped and we couldn’t find him. Several days went by and I heard a scream and a bang from the kitchen. Ollie II, in mode 3 and surrounded by his droppings, was curled up in the Dutch Oven we had received as a wedding present. So long, little fella.

Several years ago, I was in the crawlspace and noticed droppings and opossum prints in the dirt. I set my trap and caught Ollie III. I had no idea how he got in there, but the kids liked him so we kept him for a few days before releasing him.

Six months later, we started noticing a foul odor in the downstairs powder room. I took the toilet apart, replacing the wax ring, the bolts and the supply line, but the odor remained. It finally got so bad that I thought maybe there was something wrong with the sewage line under the house. I grabbed a flashlight and went again into the crawlspace; the odor was overpowering, making me gag.

Finally, I found the issue; Ollie IV lay on his side, dead, directly under the powder room. He was grotesque. He was covered with maggots and half of his face had been eaten away, leaving his jaw exposed in a hideous sardonic grin. Gagging, I picked him up by his rat-like tail and put him into a garbage bag. I found that the builder had left a 8″ gap where the HVAC came in and that’s how they had been getting in. I bricked it up, but the stench persisted for days.

My recommendations:

Dogs? Great pet.

Raccoons? Dunno, never caught one.

Opossums? Excellent gift for the in-laws.