St Paul and the wild opossum

Our Minneapolis/St Paul annual visit has typically been scheduled for July/August, but this year, because of the eye surgery, we were coming through in October. We didn’t even think about weather issues (I had conveniently forgotten the memories of my 30 years in the “north country” and those brisk fall days). We realized that we might be looking at some cool nights when Rick and Sue, the campground owners, told us that they closed for the season on October 7th. Since we wanted to be in the area to help out Mom and E.D. close up the lake house, we decided to brave the chilly weather. We spent a weekend in Wisconsin at the lake.

These visits are always a bit boring for John. I had my annual dinner with Kathy and Jane and caught up on their lives, their kids and now grandkids, and all of the trials and tribulations of old high school friends.

This year I also re-discovered an old Ziff colleague- Dianne – who I had lost touch with for all these years. She and her husband had been transferred to Athens, then to Brussels and had just returned to the States and their home in Woodbury- just a few miles from our campground. We decided to get together for lunch and catch up. Di’s life is crazy- two kids with impossible schedules. Between football, hockey, tennis, youth group meetings and car pooling- and her ‘baking business’ – she leads an absolutely insane life. After meeting Chloe (and John), we took a ride to her house to meet her ‘babies’- Lester and Leo, her shitz-tzu’s. When Di let Lester outside, he raced out- and under their deck. We heard mad barking and Di said that she was sure there was a dead animal under the deck. She got out a broom and tried to get both the animal carcass and Lester out from under the deck. Then we heard not only barking from Lester, but a very different growling from some other creature. It was unnerving and then there was silence. Di looked up at me and said, “Do you think he’s dead?”….and we both had visions of trying to get a bloodied Lester out from under the deck while fighting off some other wild creature. Then, we heard the barks again and Lester raced out from under the deck. Di appeared with a dead animal carcass that looked like something from Jurrasic Park. As only a Viking woman could do- she came in to the kitchen, triumphantly holding the carcass – and smiled.

Then, she tried to figure out how to place the carcass in the garage to get the maximum impact when her husband arrived home that night… Her 9 year old son, meanwhile, was trying to convince her to let him take it to school. Postscript—the living creature under the deck was there for several days. After calls to Animal Control (no help), they decided to try to trap it. Days later, I got an email- it was a 0possum and they were able to trap it and set it free in the wild.