ALAYNA & PLAYING POSSUM?

John was on top of the shed, putting mastic around the skylight that had been leaking.  I was adjusting the ladder for him to come down on the other side.

Alayna 5 and Jayden 7, had disappeared around back.  They're older, I don't pay them as much attention, as long as I've seen them in the last 2 minutes or I can hear them.

Here they come!

Alayna, in her fuzzy pink jacket, is all a'dither.  She came running around the corner of the garage from the backyard very excited. 

"Come!" and she waves her little hands for me to follow her.

"GrammyPam, GrammyPam come,  COME!"

"It's this big and it's furry.  It looks like a cat," her eyes are huge and her body sizzles.  She sizes it with her two little girl hands about 10 or 12 inches apart.

"I didn't touch it."

"It's asleep.  Jayden says it's dead!"

What on earth have they found?  Did Piper hide from them?  So, I follow her to the garage and around the corner.  We go into the backyard and Jayden's waiting there at the back of the deck, studying and thinking.

He says, "It looks like a cat.  It's something under there, not moving."

"John," I yell, "you gotta come see this."

He dons gloves and some paper towels; he's no dummy, he suspects what's up.

Sure enough, it was hairy, it was about that big, and it was dead.  I looked.  I bent down and looked under the deck and there it laid!  

I wanted to see if it was playing dead as possums are known to do, so I wiggled the blue tarp it was laying on.  I got a snootful - a snootful of "dead"!   YUCK!

It wasn't playing possum, it WAS a POSSUM.

"That thing stinks to high heaven," I said   

After John deposited it, Alayna had to climb up on the the wheels of the trash tote to look inside, "It's dead!

She jumps down, still chattering,  "I call him Stinky."