Dead Things

Tonight was a first. I'd been out back, cleaning up the piles of poo, occasionally scraping up the flattened and mangled toy when I (finally) spot something that doesn't look quite right. I'm asking the dogs "Where did you get that toy?" when it dawns on me.

It's a dead oppossum.

There's at least one possum that lives (or lived) all the way in the back of the yard, hiding in the pipes that have been put down for drainage. Every 6 months or so, one of the dogs will head out late at night and start barking madly. A quick check with the flashlight, and the possum will be spotted crawling down the top rail of the fence.

I don't know which dog got the possum, or if it was dead and they found it, or if someone decided it was a really cool toy, but it wound up dead in the middle of the yard. It had been there long enough that rigor had set it, so I suspect it was killed in the early hours of the morning, just before I left for work. No gaping wounds but I'll be honest - I didn't check too closely since possums remind me of nothing more than giant mutant sewer rats.

Oddly enough (or maybe not so odd) my Hindi neighbor wanted to see the possum after I picked it up. He said he'd seen *something* in his yard late at night but wasn't sure what it was. Yep, it was the possum. I don't think he'll be asking to look at dead critters any time soon now.

And yes, I was *very* happy that this was one thing that Bark did not decide to retrieve and bring in the house for later playtime.

ETA: The Great Opossum Killer has been determined to be Harley. We figure he grabbed it to make it squeak - and it didn't. Harley was also the one who tried to steal the body back when I was picking it up.