Farm Adventures... partly cloudy... unseasonably warm

The Year of the Possum(s)

As many of you know Clarabelle is our farm nighttime sentry.
(you can read more of her story HERE ) 
Since she's old and stiff now, I've been letting her stay inside overnight
until winter is over. Apparently the woods were full of Possums just
waiting for her to be absent.
Maybe You saw the pic of the one she had up the tree, and a different one in the live trap. HERE
Anyway in far  less than a month I've dealt with 7! 
Well last night tops the all time incident.
I called her back in after last call potty stop at 9 p.m. I looked
through the glass door at her gray face and opened the door.
In half a second less than no time I saw my mistake.
Below her gray face, swinging between her gray legs, was a gray possum.
She promptly set it down on the living room floor and waited for approval.
It looked dead, but then I saw it's head move.
While it played possum, I scrambled for dog collars and tried dragging both dogs
 into another room.
I aroused the man of the house, who was dozing in his big comfy chair, and said "run
out and get the snow shovel, maybe we can scoop him up and get him
back outside".
By the time I put the dogs away and he got the shovel,
the possum stopped playing possum and ran across the living room into the
dining room.
As Murphy's law would have it he/she found the only object that could be hid behind,
a free standing cabinet and got behind there.
It's VERY heavy and of course was covered in glass objects that
had to be relocated. When he dragged the cabinet away from the wall,
NO POSSUM.
The backing on the cabinet didn't come down to the floor, so now we guessed he/she was under it. He kept guard ( you never want to loose track of where in the world the possum is) and I reached under with a stick to shoo it out.
Out he'd come, look at us, and go back under. One of us said "what are
we gonna do when we get him out"? I said "how about a 5 gal. bucket,
we'll plop it down on him".
After the bucket was located and brought inside, we tried again.
The first plop produced the exclamation "He's under it", and I burst out laughing saying "Then what just ran by my feet"?  I got a "This isn't funny!" in reply, so I stifled myself. I lost track of how many tries it took to accomplish it, but we did.
It was 9:45!
Giving the mood of the other family member, the answer is "No, I didn't get a picture",
but I sure wish I had!!!!