Heck of a night and morning, the night before last. Just turned in around 11pm, and as my head hit the pillow, I heard some odd scratching noises somewhere outside. As animal noises are by no means an uncommon occurrence around here, I grabbed my trusty bedside flashlight, and proceeded to flip on all the outside lights.

Nothing.

But there was the noise again. Where the heck is it coming from?

Outside the classroom window, a herd of javelina padded by in semi darkness, but they would not explain the intermittent nails against the wall sound.

It took me a while, but eventually I drifted off to sleep despite the scratching, only to be awakened before dawn to a more persistent scraping noise. This time with a locus that seemed to be right outside the office window. I peered out into the gloom with my trusty torch, but couldn’t see much beyond the big Mexican pot on the veranda. There it was again,coming from inside the pot! Julie was up by then, and Violet. We all ventured out to take a look. With the foresight to grab a camera, Julie took this snap before we turned over the pot, and Mr./Mrs. Opossum ambled slowly out and headed straight for a drink at the fountain.. Since he hadn’t been spotted on any of the cameras in a couple of days, he’d been trapped in the pot for at least that long. We all cheered!

In the bottom of the pot was the opossum!

The rescued marsupial about to take a long drink.