Dead possum blues

When you gotta do what you gotta do

Photo by Robert Linder on Unsplash

On Sunday I got home after a long trip covering … well, if you’ve been around here for any length of time, you know. My wife welcomed me with open arms and a piece of news: A possum had died in our backyard.

Welcome home!

Even though we live in an urban neighborhood, barely two miles from Charlotte’s skyscrapers, we have lots of wildlife. Owls hoot in the trees every night. Rabbits graze on the lawns. One night a few years ago, I took our old dog out to pee at midnight and we saw a deer in the yard a couple houses over. It glanced at us, not scared in the least, and clopped off down the street.

We probably have more possums and raccoons than people. One night, Alix and I got home late and I parked on the street. We were sitting in the car talking when we saw a raccoon waddle up to the duplex on the corner. One side had a little screened-in porch. The coon climbed the steps, rose up on its hind legs, opened the screen door and walked inside, like its name was on the lease.

Last year we had a family of raccoons that decided to live in our chimney for a while. We had to hire somebody to lure them out. Turns out raccoons like honeybuns.

I did some googling about the possum and found out the city will come pick up your dead animal, but you have to get it to the curb first. It was late and I was bone tired, so we decided to wait until Monday morning even though the odor was wafting around to the front of the house.

After breakfast we got out cheap rubber gloves and a shovel. The possum had died under my dad’s old johnboat, which was leaned up against the outer wall. So we had to move the boat first. Alix laid down some newspaper. I shoveled the ex-possum onto the paper. We slid it into a garbage bag, then Alix put that inside a second garbage bag, and then put that inside a cardboard box. (Around here is when I started having flashbacks to the ending of “Se7en.”)

I took the box to the curb. We threw the gloves away and put our clothes straight in the washer. The whole thing took probably 10 minutes. But it was just about the very last way you would want to spend 10 minutes on a Monday morning. Or any morning for that matter.

As we’ve gotten older, we have accumulated a long list of shit we don’t want to do, but have to do. I don’t want to spend three weekends every year doing the paperwork for our taxes. I don’t want to take a Claritin every day because I get weird itches. I don’t want to waterproof the basement instead of vacationing in Greece.

Years ago there was a receptionist and obit writer at the Charlotte Observer named Gerry Hostetler. She was a literal firecracker—when she died, at her request, her family packed her ashes inside some fireworks and set them off. One of her favorite sayings was “swallow the frog.” What it meant was that now and then, in her job, she was faced with an unappetizing assignment and she might as well get it over with. Swallow the frog and move on.

I learned a lot from Gerry, including several excellent dirty jokes, but that was the lesson that stuck. Don’t linger too long over the nasty or boring stuff that’s got to be done. Stick that possum in a box and take it out to the curb.

Which reminds me: The city was supposed to pick up the box Tuesday. But when we went outside Monday afternoon, it was already gone. We’ve heard about “porch pirates” who steal packages from people’s houses. We are choosing to believe that someone stole our dead possum, just so we can imagine that moment when they opened the box.