I Just Killed A Possum With a Pitchfork

Ha ha ha. I'm not kidding. This actually happened. So you know how you go and see family when they are in the area and it's the holidays and all and then you have a better time then you thought and then end up staying later then you planned and then your all like crap it's late I'd better go? An you don't for like another hour because there was pie?

Yeah that's pretty much what happened to me.

So I get home and take the dog out with me to lock up the chickens. Except there is a chicken in the yard. Just sitting there. So I put the dog back in the house and go pick up the chicken. Besides giving me a token sqauk of protest she doesn't struggle, so I shove her under my arm like a football and bring her back down to the coup. Where I see my rooster Rusty is hiding in the ditch under the bridge.

Huh.

So I take miss chicken in and set her down on top the food barrels. I sweep the flashlight around. Most of the chickens are on their perches, and appear to be asleep. Then I catch a flash of white. There in the far most corner, is a possum.

Well fuck. Fuck fuckity fuck fuck.

Of course I didn't have the gun, because I am a motherfucking idiot. So I do the only thing I can think of to do. I grab the pitch fork off the wall and stab that fucker in the face. He hissed. I stabbed him again in the torso. He freaked out and tried to make a run for it. I retaliated by stabbing him in the gut.

You might think that at this point that I would be cursing at him, but I made a surprising discovery. Apparently, I can curse in possum. Which sounds a whole lot like hissing and snarling.

Which is what I was doing.

Okay. You know how in Harry Potter he can speak to snakes but isn't aware that he is doing it so he is surprised as anyone else to hear that weird hissing coming out of his mouth when he talks to a snake? Yeah it was like that. Only with possums. Who knew?

So he makes a run, and by that I mean the slow waddle of a possum, to the other corner where I stab him three more times. He refuses to die. He is however in pain and highly confused. Here he had been shopping for a nice chicken dinner at the chicken store (which was finally open) and now he was being impaled by a pitch fork while being cursed at.

So then he got really freaked but can't run by me to get out the open door so he panics and runs right into the cage where I was keeping the younger peeps and had not bothered to remove because I am lazy. So I just kicked the door shut and locked it behind him. Then I went back to get the damn gun like I should have done in the first goddamn place.

Then I meet Scott who has come looking for me and he shoots the possum in head with snake shot because solid bullets might ricochet and I don't want to end up in the ER with a possum blood covered bullet lodged in my thigh. We decide the best thing to do is leave the possum in the cage to make sure it's dead using the let's-not-find-out-the-hard-way plan.

Also at this juncture you might think that the chickens would be raising holy hell and that we would be standing in a snow globe made out of chicken feathers and avian screams, but they were fine. As far as I can tell they just slept right through it. Self preservation is not there strong point apparently.

Of course then I had to get the other chickens back. Unfortunately I did not have my head lamp which meant that once I located a chicken I had to switch my flashlight off and make a grab in the dark. I knew I needed both hands and that if I put the flashlight in my teeth they would get a wing loose and start flapping which would send the flashlight spinning off into the darkness where no one could have it.

You know, I think that's what I love about the country, really. You learn so many things. Things like, don't pick up a frighted chicken with a flashlight in your teeth. Which is probably why West Virginians don't have that many teeth.

Anywho I was lucky in that the chickens were either so petrified with either cold or terror that they just laid there while a grabbed them. Although finding chickens in the dead of a winters night with a flashlight was not the best most fun activity ever. I was also doing this in my going out to see other people clothes.

Which is probably why I don't have any nice clothes.

Then me and Scott gave up and went back inside even though we were still down two chickens and I was all like, yuppers I just killed a possum with a pitchfork.

An Scott was all like, yes, yes you did.

And then I was all like I really need to sharpen that pitch fork.

And then Scott told me I would never survive the peasant revolts without a sharp pitchfork.

I also noticed that I keep using words like 'yuppers' and 'honken' and I think it has something to do with moving to WV and OH GOD WHAT AM I BECOMING? THIS IS JUST LIKE FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON!

Ahem. Now I need to eat pie. To mitigate the horror.

Yep, to mitigate that horror.