Michael Buffington

Having a Pickup Truck Means

Wednesday, March 13 2002

Having a pickup truck means moving furniture for friends and family. The dealer doesn’t mention this when you’re in the dealership becoming intoxicated with the new car smell. It doesn’t help to say “Hey, everyone will call you up and say ‘can you move my refrigerator?’”

It’s actually not that common of an occurance, but it does happen more often than one might think. But enough of that, I’m poorly trying to segway into a story about last night. When I was moving furniture last, I used some blankets to keep the furniture safe from dings and scratches.

As I normally do for just about everything, I neglected the blankets until last night, at which point I thought it would be a good idea to put the blankets in the garage in case it rained. So I went downstairs to my truck, grabbed one of the blankets, then grabbed the other and was immediately confronted with a huge hissing ’possum.

For those that have never met a ‘possum, they’re like giant ugly greasy rats. We’re talking small dog size, and the bigger they are, the nastier they are.

Needless to say I almost had a heart attack. I decided to let the ’possum continue hanging out in the back of my truck, and let the tail gate down for him to help make his departure an easy one.

He was gone this morning, so I assume he moved on. I’m not sure how long he’d been there. It’s quite possible he was hanging out in the back of my truck for more than just a few hours, maybe a few days. Who knows.