On a COMPLETELY, 100% different topic and mood from my last entry:

So last night I heard noises in my room, not unlike the noises I heard when there was a moth in my room freaking me out with its beating against my window. (I thought someone was out there quietly cutting my screen. :S ) But it was unlike enough for me to get scared again. It sounded like scraping, like maybe my cat would do if she were being naughty and pottying in the house. But it wasn't loud enough or quick enough to be her. It occurred to me that it might be a rat or a mouse or something. It freaked me out, but I forced myself to go to sleep. It woke me up again this morning and kept me awake for an hour. I even went to my window (very bravely!!) and opened the curtains to see if it was, in fact, a moth. Bt there wasn't any critter fluttering in my curtains. Again I forced myself to go to sleep. As long as it wasn't getting louder or more frequent or anything, I could be okay.

It was quiet all day long. And then at about 10:00, the scraping noise started again. This time I wasn't half-asleep and KNEW it was some kind of animal. I tiptoed over toward my window and peered over all my boxes and blankets stacked over there, glancing at the corner between my wall and my chest of drawers. I saw some movement...A soft pink nose nuzzling its way out of the corner...And then there was a little face peering right back at me.

White face, gray long-haired body, 5 beige finger-like toes on each of its paws, bigger than a mouse or any rat I had ever seen, but smaller than my cat, two blackish eyes and the narrow pink nose I'd already become acquainted with. "That's not a rat," my brain said immediately, but it couldn't AT ALL pinpoint what it could possibly be.

I stared at him. He stared at me. I cocked my head. He stood perfectly still. I didn't feel very frightened, just wary and unsure. I looked at him longer, and then said, "You're awfully cute for a rat."

He started at the sound of my voice, and that's when I first realized that he was afraid of me. "Boo!" I said, kind of loudly, and he started again. I gesticulated and jumped at him a couple more times just to make sure. And then I called my mom.

"Steph! Can I call you back in, like, 5 minutes?" Mom said through her phone.

"Sure. Um... There's a rat in my room," I said. What else could it be?

"EW!" was Mom's immediate reaction. Mom was afraid of rats?

"Yeah. Gimme a call back," I said.

Couple minutes later she called me and I told her more about the critter. He was still sitting in the same spot, staring at me. "What should I do? Oh, hi, Kitten," I said as my cat appeared in the door, and suddenly realized what could happen with a cat and a rat--even one as big as this--in the same room. "We can't let Kitten get it--what should I do??"

"Well, close the door," Mom said. Oh... Duh. I stepped outside, making sure to shove Patch/Kitten (she has two names) back, and shut the door. "I just got done here, so I'll be home in about 10 minutes," Mom told me. "When I get home, we can try to get it into the kitty carrier."

After we hung up, I paced outside my door, trying to keep Kitten away, wondering what to do with a rat in my room, wondering what it really was, since it was way too cute to be a rat, and just generally trying to get over the sheer ridiculousness of it all. There was about a 2.5-inch gap between my door and the floor, which the critter could get out of, so I blocked it up with some sheets. The 10 minutes till Mom got home seemed like one of the longest 10 minutes I'D ever faced! But finally she got home. The first thing I asked her was where her camera was. This kind of wacky, once-in-a-lifetime event HAD to be documented!

She got her camera and we got our kitty carrier and a piece of cheese (maybe he would be lured by the cheese??) and went to my door. I opened it an inch or two at a time, in case the little guy had ventured out of his corner, until it was wide open. I half-expected him to be sitting on top of my pile of blankets and boxes ready to bolt. Mom and I stepped into the room, took a few steps forward, and there he was, right where I'd left him. Still staring at these alien, two-legged, tailless creatures about 50x as big as him. :D

More staring as Mom took him in. "Is that a possum?" Mom exclaimed.

A possum! Was that a possum?!

"I thought they lived in...like...Australia!" I said, not sure where in the world I had heard that random trivia bit.

We set the cage down with the piece of cheese in it (do opossums eat cheese??), and the little guy looked a little interested but not interested enough to go in of his own volition. There was a broom behind my door and Mom used it to half-guide, half-shove him into the cage. Now he looked just plain scared. Poor opossum!

"Now look up possum," Mom told me. I was already opening up my computer. :D

I searched opossums on Google Images, not even sure whether I should look up "possum" or "opossum." Here's one of the pictures I found, just for you:

That was our little guy! We definitely had a possum on our hands. In our HOUSE.

I'm still getting over it. That cute little face looking at me from behind my chest of drawers! Of all the crazy things to happen!

The story does not end there, though. But Mom says I have to go to bed. ::rolls eyes:: She's trying to get me to go to bed earlier because school is starting in a few weeks. (How old am I again?) But the second half of the opossum story is long, too, so I'll just save it for another entry tomorrow. I hope I can tell it as well in the morning. :)

-Stephanie

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