A Fright in the Night

Just a little funny story that I remember from my childhood. If you have read some of my previous blogs you know that part of my childhood we lived above our coffee shop/swap shop in an apartment. Well on one night in late fall, we had just finished eating our dinner and my mom was taking out the kitchen garbage. We kept our big garbage can at the top of the enclosed stairway, as the door for our apartment went into the kitchen. The garbage can was one of those metal ones with a removable metal lid. My mom went out the door with the garbage and all of a sudden I heard her scream, a blood curdling scream. I went to the door to see what was wrong and she came busting through the door and knocked me down. She was yelling for my stepdad, who by this time had came running to see what all the commotion was about. He helped me up from the floor and asked my mom had she done went crazy. She told him that there was something in the garbage can, some critter of some kind. She said, "I took the lid off to put the garbage in and there were eyeballs staring at me and whatever it is, it hissed at me"  My stepdad went to see what was in the can....he found a mother opossum and her babies...he put the lid on tight and took the can downstairs. The next day, a friend and him took the can and released the family of opossums farther out in the country. We never could figure out how that mother opossum was able to get not just herself, but also her babies into the building and then into the can....Of course it became a huge joke about how my mom went screaming, running and knocked me down. She also never went to take the kitchen garbage out again without a flashlight, lol...