Mama Possum Was Unhappy

Bandersnatch: I still have no idea how it got in the trash can.

Wow, seems like I was gone a long time, and I come back and this is still the top thread? Maybe my time sense is off.

Summer of '68 or '69, working for the park department, going around the park loading up trash cans to take to the dump. (BTW: The Public is trashy.)

I walk up to one of the cans (open 55G barrel) and it hisses at me. Mama Possum had evidently crawled up a tree next to the can, dropped in, and couldn't get out. She was unhappy.

I pondered a bit.

I loaded the can on the back of the flatbed. Then I shook the can up real good and slammed it down on its side. There was the rat-tail sticking out from under the garbage. Perfect, my young idiot self thought.

With one mule-gloved hand, I grabbed a bunch of garbage and, insulated with that, held her neck, and with the other hand grabbed the tail and yanked real hard, throwing her well away from the truck. Then, I scrambled up onto the flatbed, rather hastily.

She was not terribly grateful. She stalked off, staring at me and hissing. I say she because, as she walked away, it looked like she really needed to nurse some babies.

Hard labor job, mostly, but great working in the park all summer. Only time I ever saw a road-runner was there. Turned on to the road going down to the dump, and there, standing on a rock, looking almost like the cartoon, was this amazing, spindly bird. I blinked, and literally in that blink, it disappeared.