The Return of the Feculent Possum

It's Spring, so there must be a dead possum in my yard.



Since this has been the case for the past two years, I feared the worst when I began smelling something dead today.



Sniff, sniff. Is it in the garage? I went and got a flashlight and shined it in all the likely spots. The smell persisted, even though I couldn't find anything.



Could it be outside the garage? I have a lot of salvaged wood and fencing leaning against the side of the garage and it's a popular site for animals to hide. Sure enough, when I moved a stack of 2x4's I saw fur.



At first I thought it might be a cat, but as it was revealed it all its putrefascence it turned out to be another GIANT possum. Why do these things always choose MY yard to die in? I haven't had catfood on the porch all winter because I brought my outside cats inside for the duration, thereby cutting down on my food costs as I was not feeding every living thing for miles. I'm probably the cause of its demise in that regard.



Off to find a spot in the yard I can dig a hole. Dug one and went back to get the decaying marsupial. Whoops! Too big, have to dig a bigger hole. Carried it across the yard dropping writhing carrion worms the whole way. Went back and scraped up the "pieces" that were left over and filled in the hole. It still stinks.



Hosed down the spot as well as I could and hope the worms die in the sun.



Well, got that job done for another year! That is, unless something comes along and digs it up.

Annual Rites of Spring

Today I finally girded my loins and decided to find out what was making the stink under my back porch that was so bad I could smell it through the walls in the basement. First I dug a big hole over by my neighbor's house--heh, heh--then moved the bale of straw that makes up one of the sides of my fancy under-the-porch cat shelter. IT WAS THE LARGEST, FATTEST POSSUM I HAD EVER SEEN!! I didn't get a picture because I wanted to get this feculent (to borrow a word from Greg at the Petch House) thing in the ground. The hole wasn't big enough so I had to stand next to this oozing stinking thing and dig some more. I folded it into the hole--it had lost its rigor--and covered it up. I can still smell it through the ground over there.

Here is Spot checking out the toy possum. The door to the space is standing open.

It still stunk under the porch so I raked out a lot of the straw that was under the possum and took it and one of the bales to the city recycle site. I was still smelling something so got a flashlight and peered in. Now I know where all those succulent suicidal squirrels ended up. Something had been digging up all my squirrel burials and carting away the remains for a while--now I know who.

It smells a lot better on the patio now.

In other news this is my Magnolia x Soulangiana or Tulip Tree as we call them here, today.

It should look like this right now.

That's not gonna happen this year because of this a few weeks ago.

All the buds that hadn't opened are filled with brown mush and are falling off the tree. At least the lilacs are doing great, and the Black Currant (ribes nigrum) smells wonderful. (That really helped with the smell of the feculent possum.)