The drippy April weather inspired a fur-bearing rodent to seek someplace dry. In this case, it was an opossum who decided to take up residence in my garage.

Caz took serious offense at the idea that a non-playmate was using his very own garage. And not only that, upending stacks of stuff that he hadn't gotten around to knocking over yet.

The opossum spent Saturday night in the garage, and on Sunday I couldn't convince the mighty hunter to abandon his quest, take his walk and do what needs to be done.

So Caz went into the house, and I went into the corner of the garage where Caz swore there was an intruder.

He was right.

Behind the garbage cans, crouched in a corner between a couple sets of shelves, was a gray mass with big, pathetic, black eyes staring at me, pleading to not be thrust into the cold outdoors.

So I got a broom and tried to pry him loose and lead him to a grand adventure.

This is, as we all know, the first stage of the Heroic Journey, adventure beckons Our Hero and he wants nothing to do with it.

He wasn't having any of this. He didn't roll onto his back and play dead, but he (I think it was he) was as cooperative as a lump of lead.

Carol was short, so we had one of those claw-on-a-stick things for grabbing cans off the top (or second from the top) shelf.

This claw-on-a-stick is the right size to go around a possum's neck, and the squeezer is strong enough to hold the possum without strangling it.

This is the second act of a Heroic Journey - the Instigating Event.

Mind you, "Not strangling" is not the same as "making it happy." The possum stopped playing mostly-dead and displayed an awful lot of teeth at me (from about 3 feet away from any part of me) and growled.

Ah, the Hero Overcomes Obstacles. This is definitely the middle of the opossum's tale.

I didn't know possums could growl. It's not a happy sound.

The opossum was definitely not happy about being dragged from the nice, safe (and slightly warm) hideyhole behind the shelves, but it only played inert, not actively trying to escape. I dragged it to the garage doorway and released it, and it just lay there.

So I dragged it onto the grass. The Hero has reached a new world and achieved new understanding.

The opossum did not recognize it's part in the Hero's Journey. It lay on the grass and did nothing.

I reached the grabber toward it to make one last grab and take it to the woods. That would be the fitting end to a Hero's Journey - The Return Home, Triumphant. (Or at least older and wiser.)

When the claw descended again the opossum decided to leave. It scurried under the deer fence around my front-yard garden and vanished.

I've had a thing living under the front deck for a while, and I wonder if that thing was a possum, or if it's not a thing disputing with a possum.

If the under-the-deck-dweller doesn't have a two-foot grabber, I'm afraid it's doomed to have a new roommate.

But that's good enough for me. I was happy to play the antagonist in The Opossum's Garage Adventure, I'll let the woodchuck take the lead in the sequel.