"Little Jimmy"

Rewind to the spring of 2013, before Murphy joined us. We caught sight of a LARGE opossum early one morning in our yard. Sophie gave chase and briefly caught it before dropping it. We bought a humane trap and after a couple of nights, we had the mother opossum, but a baby was clinging to the outside of the trap. Opossum, as a rule, are nasty, but "Little Jimmy" was kind of cute. I caught the tail end of that incident (pardon the pun) as MacGyver managed to race in the door, yell upstairs to me, grabbed a net and an empty ash bucket and shot back out the door. (See why I call him MacGyver?) Little Jimmy was gone! I am sure that his mother told him to "Run, save yourself, it's too late for me now!"

Fast forward to August 18, 2013, Murphy's sixth week anniversary with us and what an anniversary!! Due to our schedules, we generally walk our dogs early in the  morning. That Sunday was no exception with a 6 am wake up call and it was raining! It was very dark because of the rain. Murphy shot out the door as usual but was not seen or heard from for several minutes. Murphy is a large dog and usually we can keep track of him by sound. He did not come when called and so MacGyver was dispatched to investigate. Then I heard, "Come see this!" I knew it was not pretty. I refused to go any closer, which was a very healthy distance away. It was Little Jimmy. What if Jimmy was "playing opossum" and decided to end the game when I took hold of the flashlight? It was indeed Little Jimmy who Murphy had quietly and quickly dispatched to the "other side." MacGyver, once again was left with the dirty work of shoveling up Little Jimmy, who was now medium sized Jimmy, and putting him in the trashcan. When I took a bag of trash out later in the day, I confess I banged on the trashcan lid first and got the bag in the can as quickly as possible.

Sophie gave Murphy wide berth on our walk that morning. Must have been the opossum breath. Right now, it's all quiet at the OK Corral.There's a new sheriff in town and he ain't playing opossum!

Here is "the sheriff", taking a nap after getting the opossum.

Happy tales to you!