My Vote Goes to Whomever Eradicates Opossums

August was such a busy month that I forgot to make my August post before the month ended... oopsie daisy! Never fear, September will just be a double feature.

Let's start with some home improvement, shall we? I mean, that's what this blog was initially intended for anyway. A while back, Derek installed a dog door in the wall that goes from the house to the patio. He did not; however, install one from the patio to the yard. So, for the past 3 years, the dog door, ready to be installed, has been sitting against the wall in the living room, and the screen door has been left open so the dogs can get from the patio to the yard. This is why we had the delightful pigeon incident. During Derek's most recent visit, we had another, much more scary, incident.

Have you ever seen a pissed off opossum before? I had never seen one at all, other than on TV, but during Derek's last visit, I learned that opossum's are essentially rats with horrifying alligator mouths.

Exhibit A (from google)

One night while Derek was here, he saw Fozzie go through the dog door and pee on the patio (a delightful habit I'm working on correcting), so he got up and went to correct him when he saw that Fozzie was going nuts over something in the corner of the patio hiding behind our fire pit. Seeing that it was an opossum, he called for me to come bring Fozzie in the house, and attempted to get the creature off of our patio safely. The opossum; however, had no intentions of leaving gracefully. Derek used a broom to gently try and guide it towards the door, and the opossum, with it's horrifying alligator mouth, was hissing and lunging at Derek. Getting more aggressive, Derek wacked the vile creature with the broom repeatedly moving it off of the patio, but the creature wanted more. Even when off the patio and no longer trapped, he still kept coming after Derek.

Eventually, Derek got it to go away, but I was absolutely horrified. What if it came back when Derek wasn't here? What if it was rabid- I mean, aren't they supposed to "play opossum," and not attack you? What if it got my Fozzie bear? I instantly decided we needed that second door installed, and I would be calling someone in the morning to hire them to put it in. Derek asked me to wait and let him do it, and even though I had heard this before, I decided to give him 1 day. When I came home, I saw this...

Alas! One more thing knocked off the endless home improvement list. But never fear, I didn't make Derek work on the house the entire time he was home. While he was here, we took a trip to Gainesville to help my brother get settled into his very first college dorm...

and while we were in town, we got to hang out with our fabulous niece and nephew.

Sadly, his time home was not as happy of a reunion as he would have hoped. Our first baby, Lucy, hasn't been doing well for a while, and it seems as if she held on just a little bit longer to see her daddy one more time. After one last day enjoying the park as a family, and many tears, we said goodbye to our baby. Lucy was an amazing dog, and will always be our first baby and our first love. We feel lucky to have had her in our lives. We love you Lucy.