Forget that coffee! There's a possum in my dunny!

Mid morning....nice hot day. Still a coffee is always required around 10.30 am in the morning or so. Then the crunch of car tyres on the driveway = visitor = my mother getting out of her car with her pajamas still on. The reason - her dunny door was open. The old dunny which is now a garden shed that holds my mother's pots and garden tools. The thunder box still there but covered up. Still - it's a dunny.

As with all long since disused dunnies, sooner or later, it becomes the perfect place for the habitation of nocturnal furry creatures known by the initials R.M.S or Rotten Marsupial Sods. Also referred to by normal people as Australian Brush-tailed Possum.

I made her a cup of tea of course, while she told me about what was sitting above the old dunny door, grey fur sticking out in all directions glaring coldly back at the human being still blinking away the night's sleep to commence with diurnal activities - like having breakfast. Breakfast time is not supposed to be interrupted by the spotting of dunny doors mysteriously being left open when the day before it was closed.

So there we are, with me forgetting completely about the coffee, in discussion about how we would deal with said RMS in my mother's dunny. She offered to put out the trap. That would be fine, but the thing would only cause damage to the trees and garden, before its greed got the better of it and it ended up in the trap stone cold dead in the morning. Pulling out stiff RMS out of a Timms Trap is at times a mission to extract the thing. A few hard shakes is what it usually takes to yank them out of there.

A trap is one solution - but, I had a much better, and more instant solution to dealing with the hairy pest in my mother's dunny. Outside looking on, was of course the Village Idiot dog Simon. He loves to hunt possums...and everything else he can find unfortunately. But..he was the best solution for the hairy sod in the dunny. So my mother went back up to her place locked up her cats while yours truly put the lead on the dog and walked up the hill in the wake of her departure.

Get up there - look in the dunny - no possum? Dog however was on the scent sniffing around knocking over garden forks and pots to try to figure out where RMS was hiding. So I shoved my cattle stick into the bits and pieces. Next thing out flies RMS with grey fur sticking right out, the well sharpened claws out for a rumble in the jungle type conflict - before it sprinted straight up into the rafter.

There it sat, hissing, the grey fur now standing out in vertical formation. It sure didn't appreciate the hard shove from the cattle stick in its face. By now, dog was trying to nab the RMS. One more shove in the furry face had the thing dropping and dog onto it.

Dog ended RMS there and then - much to my mother's relief. One less TB carrying pest on the farm, one less eating our trees and our wildlife. I hate possums - dog just thinks they're dinner.
Now where's that coffee I forgot about.