Sometime ago….. or maybe I ought to say, “Once upon a time” … My wife , Joan, had a run in with one of Ohio’s ugliest critters–an opossum. Or just “possum” for short.
Joan teaches clinical instruction for Cleveland State’s school of nursing, and it involves getting up very early in the morning and working a long day in a hospital. Well on this one particular morning, Joan was opening the door of our attached garage when she heard something shuffling along the wall behind my black beauty Camaro. She groped in the dark for the light switch and when the lights bloomed into brilliance, there was a loud and very weird screeching noise as a possum came running out from under the Camaro heading right between Joan’s legs.
As you can imagine my wife was quite startled. She did what every red blooded American woman would do, she screamed.
Joan slapped the garage door opener’s wall switch and as the door opened she bolted out of the garage. The possum who had been trapped in the garage for hours, now saw the growing gap between the floor and the door. He lurched towards his freedom; but, suddenly the woman was cutting him off! He tried to reverse himself, but too late. He slid right into her legs, bounced back, turned around and went straight back into the garage.
Joan cried out, “Jiminy crickets!! Craig, Cur-raig!”
She was trying to call me out of my deep slumber. I never heard a single thing, but the neighbors sure did. The neighborhood began to light up like Bedrock whenever Wilma’s cat locks Fred Flintstone out of his house.
Somebody called the cops. We live just around the corner from the police station, and there’s not even a donut shop between the station and our house to slow down their response. The men in blue arrived to see a wild-eyed woman staring into the garage. They were trying to figure out what was going on as they stepped out of their cruiser.
My wife said, “Got a possum”. But that’s not what the policeman heard! “Got a gun” is what the policeman heard.
The atmosphere became very tense. The policemen, thinking they were now facing down a crazy armed women dressed in white, called for backup. Within minutes the police SWAT team was setting up around our house leveling sniper rifles at my wife.
Our city Councilman lives just down the street. He was looking out his window at what he thought was a major crisis developing in his neighborhood. A good politician, he knew what to do next. Call the TV stations and prepare for a photo op. By now the whole neighborhood was awake, except me. People in their robes and pajamas, some wearing fuzzy slippers that looked like Homer Simpson, were streaming out of their houses to see what was going on.
Blue and red flashing lights, white strobe lights and local news TV video camera lights were turning my bedroom into a late night disco. I finally woke up. When I turned on the radio I heard there was a hostage situation developing in Parma. I leisurely dressed, went downstairs, into the garage, I saw a very frightened possum hunkered down in the corner. I said “Hey, little fella, has this ruckus got you scared?” I took a broom and sort of shushed him on his way out the side of the garage. He tore off into the darkness never to be seen again.
Just about then, they had my wife in the back of a police cruiser. A detective shook his head in denial as Joan told the story about the possum. They didn’t believe there were possums in Parma. The detective was getting pretty mad because Joan refused to tell him what she did with the gun. While the detective interrogated her, the other policemen were having a argument about whether the purple stethoscope around her neck should be considered a weapon.
Since the hostage situation didn’t seem to be developing, the news media lost interest and left. The councilman congratulated the police on a job well done. Slowly everybody went home.
Except for my wife
However, upon further questioning, and upon learning that she was on her way to teach clinical instruction, that she is the President of the Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society and President of the Northeast Ohio Medical Surgical Nurses Association, and of course married to me, they decided it was okay to let her go.
In the next issue of the Parma- Sun Newspaper the headlines read: “Councilman thwarts Hostage attempt.”