THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

I was having morning tea after church and was talking to the Rector’s wife.  She was concerned about strange noises that they had been experiencing for some time under the floor of the house, and was wondering could it be a possum.  I’d never heard of a possum under the floor before, because possums usually live in trees, and in ceilings, but I thought there was a first time for everything.  She had thought at first it may have been a rat, but she said last night they actually saw its pink nose through a crack in the step.  She explained the reason they hadn’t called before, was because they had originally thought it could get out, and they reckoned it had probably been there over a week, maybe ten days.  So I thought, we should get something organised as soon as possible.  We finished our tea, and she showed me where they had seen it and heard it.  We found manholes and we checked outside for possible exits and entrances, but could find nothing at all. 

So I called Sue, our possum expert, and she came round with a trap, and we tried to get it through the manhole, so we could set it.  No luck at all, the trap was bigger than the manhole.  So we decided the best thing we could do, and we thought this would probably work, because we reckoned the possum would be very hungry, was to place the trap right next to the manhole cover, baited with an apple, and hope it decided to investigate the food, rather than trash the room, which they are quite capable of doing.  As an added precaution, we shut the door, so any damage done would be contained in one room. 

 Sue and I went home, and left the people there, anxiously waiting for the sound of a possum rampaging through the room, or trap clicking closed.  After a sound night’s sleep, they rang me in the morning, saying the possum had been caught, and had eaten all the apple, nothing in the room had been touched, and they had heard absolutely nothing.  They gave him another quarter apple until I got there.  I arrived, and found a very scared, very thin possum cowering in the corner of the trap.  I took him home, and set him up in residence on the front verandah, and gave him another half apple, and covered the trap with a blanket, so he could go to sleep. 

That night I gave him more food, because I reckoned he was pretty hungry:  another apple, an apricot, half a banana and a small bunch of grapes.  In the morning only a few grapes remained, and he looked a bit better, bit still seemed weak.  Sue came round and checked him out and we decided we should get him back into the wild as soon as possible, so he wouldn’t lose his territory.  But first he needed more food, and that night, at dusk, I gave him another apple, more apricots and grapes, some rockmelon, and the other half banana.  An hour later most of that had gone, and he was looking much brighter.  So into the car went the trap, and off we went to release him.  He realised he was going home, and by the time we got there, he was bashing up against the gate of the trap, so we took the trap out and put it near the base of a tree, and released the gate.  He shot out at a rate of knots, and headed straight for another tree; the one we had chosen was not good enough.  We left the remains of the food there in case he came back, and went home, satisfied that we had another happy customer, and hoping he would stay away from under floors in future.