The Opossum Saga

For those of you who aren't aware, we have an opossum living under our house. We were first aware of it last September when I (Ben) was home alone one night (I think Jodi was down south meeting sofia), and I heard some scratching noises coming from a plumbing access in our wall. I removed the cover, and my face was about 10 inches from a hissing, stinking, teeth-bearing opossum. I put the cover back on as fast as I could, and hoped that would be my last encounter with that creature.

Well, in the last month or so, we've been hearing more scratching noises and smelling something like dead fish - it must be back. Well, I was not excited about another face-to-face encounter, so while Jodi's parents were here, I mounted an infrared camera in the plumbing access hole to be sure we were in fact dealing with an opossum. This is what it captured:

So it is an opossum. We decided that live-trapping it would be the best thing, but first some reconnaissance was needed in our crawl space. As I mentioned, I was not excited about coming face-to-face with it again, let alone entering its domain under our house. I was willing, however, to send in a scout. Enter: the Opossumator.

The only lifted truck I will ever buy. $30 at Toys r Us, and that includes an "accidental damage" policy. But it needed some modifications.

Like a front-mounted infrared camera:

A rear-mounted wireless video transmitter:

And an underbelly battery pack for the above:

The completed project is hereby dubbed the Opossumator:

On Friday we sent the opossumator on its mission under our house. Unfortunately, $30 doesn't buy you much of an off-road RC car, and it got stuck after about 45 seconds and I had to crawl under the house anyway to retrieve it. but at least I was armed with the knowledge that the opossum wasn't within the first 8 feet of the access hole.

We also got some footage of the vehicle navigating the less-taxing terrain of the interior of our house, but I opted not to include that.

So in the end, the Opossumator was a bit of a letdown. But I think I will attempt to add a microphone at use it at school somehow. I'm not sure how yet.

As for the opossum, we still plan to rent a live trap, and probably put it where I got into the crawl space and hope for the best. We'll keep you posted (pun intended) with any more progress.