Well, enough people have mentioned this for me to want to give it a shot. So here I am - writing a blog. Don't get too excited - this may all peter out pretty quick. Or who knows? Maybe I will find my calling and become a famous writer :)
My first entry: appropriately titled "Where the Wild Things Are"
You want to know where the wild things are? I'll tell you where they are: they are in my garage!
We live in the suburbs if you want to call it that. In a subdivision with houses all around. We have a pet cat named Tiger who lives outside mainly in the garage as he is lazy and does not like the heat. A little history on Tiger: he is a wimp. We got him as a kitten when a friend took him in as a stray and was afraid her dog would have him for lunch. Rescued from certain death, he came to live with us. Not long after he got into a little scuffle with something - another cat, a racoon, a dog? In any event, he got shots and some stitches and apparently his balls chopped off while he was there because ever since he has been a complete coward. (In his defense he did get his ass kicked so I don't totally blame him.) Another cat comes around pretty often and Tiger practically serves his meals to him on a silver platter. Ken just says that Tiger is a lover, not a fighter.
So now that you know about Tiger you can imagine his state of distress last night when we arrived home (and by "we", I mean me, Ken and all three kids) and saw some other animal in our garage. Our garage is in a perpetual state of clutter no matter how much we try to keep it organized. This is not entirely the fault of Ken, despite the garage being his domain. A large portion of the clutter there now is a china cabinet I just bought that needs repair, but I digress.
I assumed this other animal was another cat that we would just run off like usual so I was taken by surprise when Ken jumped out of the moving car and ran into the garage grabbing a broom on his way. Realizing that the broom was to be used as a weapon (why was a plastic broom his weapon of choice? I hope this is not a dangerous animal!) I sat up in my seat to get a better look. The battle begins. Ken is in a fit of rage swinging the broom (dangerously close to my china cabinet!!) and Camille asks why daddy is playing golf in the garage. Thankfully she had an obstructed view and could not see the animal or the extent of what was happening. Then her questions start: "Mom, what is daddy doing? Why is he playing with that broom? What is that animal? Why is Tiger scared? Can i go play with Tiger and the other animal and Daddy? Where is the other animal going?".....
At this point it occurs to me that this is not simply another cat we are dealing with but some other creature of the night - my money was on a grizzly bear the way Ken was jumping all around and swinging the broom with all his might. I can't get a good view of it but whatever it is, it's not the smartest thing since it is not trying to escape but instead hiding in and around my china cabinet. At this point I am about to get out and take a swing at it myself. Then I see it - it's a possum. And all this coinciding with the premiere of the new TLC show called "Swamp People"! It's fate! Despite Ken's fight I see that it is a tiny possum - not even as big as Tiger who is messing himself in the corner. I had to take a second look to make sure it was not in fact a 250 pound monster-possum. It wasn't. Now he really is swinging the broom like a golf club with the little possum child on the end of it flying at warp speed out of the garage. Apparently, without my knowing, we have entered Defcon 5. This thing ended up at the end of our driveway "mortally wounded" as Ken said.
We are finally all able to safely exit the car (possums don't travel in packs, do they?) and go inside. Camille is still asking what the other animal was and where he went so I tell her it was a possum and he went to see Jesus. I ask Ken if he k-i-l-l-e-d it and he says no, that he needs to finish taking care of it. He leaves again and comes back a few minutes later saying that it was taken care of. I ask if the COD was blunt force trauma (I watch a LOT of CSI on tv...for those of you who do not, COD stands for "Cause of Death"), which it is. Thankfully a storm came right after to wash the blood off our driveway and Ken's proverbial hands.
We all escaped the predator unscathed. Even my china cabinet. The best part is knowing that my husband is a rugged man just like the one on the Old Spice commercials. (Can your man single-handedly kill a 3-pound adolescent possum?) I will say that Ken mentioned after it was over that he first grabbed Camille's toy broom which is all of 2 feet long. While ill-advised, it would have made for a much more entertaining battle - more like a hand-to-hand combat situation. And he didn't take my advice to put the carcass on a stake in the front yard as a warning to his little possum friends. I guess we will just have to be extra careful when going into the garage at night...
