RATS!

k/k,

You didn't USE the towel and throw it out when it got old, didja????

I had forgotten all about this, but I do have an unfortunate possum story to share. Remember, I was just a witness... sort of...

I was living in a pretty nice semi-urban neighorhood outside Chicago, you know, kind of Boston-ish, brownstones, etc. One day neighbors moved in. They were a nice Irish couple, just come stateside.

Our building was pretty vermin-free as these things go, but one warm fall led to a very cold winter and some of the local critters tried to move in anywhere a crack would let them indoors. I got the mice, and others got other critters, etc. We all had cats and this was not a big deal, OK? We weren't infested, and I never saw a rat the four years I lived there, anywhere in the area.

Well John and Iva were completely freaked out. Car alarms going off would make them pee their pants. In fact they would dash down to check their own car, safe in a locked garage, every time, and I would hear them bootling down the back stair several times each night. This would always wake me up, BTW.

One night there was a commotion outside the back where we shared a common stairway and little patio. I went to see who was being murdered. There was John, swinging down a flat shovel with all his might, muscles a-bulge, flattening whatever lay below the onslaught. Wanting no part of this, I stayed indoors. You know sometimes you can help people find their way and sometimes you have to let them find it themselves! He seemed to be doing OK, whatever he was doing…

The next morning Iva proudly shared how John had done his part for the neighbors, me especially, by eliminating the biggest rat he had ever seen. "They're so big here!!" she breathed, awestruck and disgusted and frightened all at the same time.

God forgive me, I never told them the critter I found in that day's trash was a mere lowly possum. I didn't want to make them feel foolish, and could not figure out (at that young age) how to tell them gracefully. And John was kind enough to cap off a burst steam radiator for me one night too. I imagine they went to bed every night thinking the rustling of the trees was more big American rats trying to chew their way in. They finally moved on, and to this day probably tell God-only-knows what kind of stories about awful America.