Sweaty Bubba!

Here it is folks, the classic Sweaty Bubba story. This one happened several years ago too, but I still have people ask me about him. Here is the story:



OK, in my never ending quest to keep you informed of the latest developments of my life, I submit to you this next chapter in my life story. This one is entitled Sweaty Bubba and the Possums.

Our story begins at about 11:00 last night (Friday). I got home and my house looked the same as normal. I had no idea that things were about to become very interesting.

I sat down to check my email. My house was pretty dark and quiet at that time. While reading through the email, I heard a noise behind me. When you live alone, it’s not that often that you hear noises in your house that you aren’t able to identify. I turned around, and there was a possum about six feet away from me. He was the size of a small cat. He was running around, playing, sniffing and just checking out what he must have thought was his new home. This was a new thing for me to have unexpected visitors in my home. I wasn’t expecting company, especially at that hour. He must have read my mind because he looked at me, stopped, and then ran down the hall.

What does one do when one finds a possum running through one’s house? I’m not an expert on this topic by any means, but the first thing I did was close the bedroom door. That’s right. Close the bedroom door. Having unexpected visitors in the living room is one thing. Having an unexpected overnight guest is another. If this critter was planning to stay, he was not going to stay in my room. He had to find his own room. Problem solved (yeah, right). I went back to reading my email.

Five minutes later, I looked down, and there at my feet was the possum again. Geez, this possum was pretty brave, I thought. I have to admit that having the possum so close to me freaked me out. I just stared at it. I didn’t know what else to do. When in doubt, just stare. That’s what I did. He eventually realized that someone was staring at him and looked up. He apparently was more freaked out than I was. He took off down the hall.

At this point, I got out the rat poison that I had in my cupboard (yes, I keep rat poison in my cupboard). I also got a rat trap and set it. If you’ve never seen a rat trap, let me tell you. They’re big. The trap is about the size of a videotape. It’s like a miniature guillotine. This’ll get him, I thought. He’ll eat the peanut butter and in the process he’ll lose his head. Fair trade, I think.

So I went to bed. And forgot about it. Sort of. I did dream that the possum got caught, but ran away. It’s a good thing that my door was shut so he couldn’t get in. I kept reminding myself that. “He can’t get in. He can’t get in. He can’t get in. . . ”

And it’s right about at this point that you, the reader, are thinking, “Oh no, he got in!” Let me assure you, he didn’t get in the bedroom. I’m sorry if I falsely foreshadowed something that didn’t really happen. I did use foreshadowing, but not about the possum getting inside the bedroom. Keep reading . . .

I woke up and went out to check the rat trap. Guess what happened? The trap was gone! There was no sign of the rat trap anywhere. There was no hair, no sign of a struggle, and certainly no possum head. The possum and the trap were gone. This will go down in history as one of those great mysteries. Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried? Where is Adolph Hitler’s body? What happened to the Roanoke colonists? What happened to that possum and the trap in my living room?

The answer is, I don’t know. I looked everywhere. There is absolutely nowhere that I can see in my house where he might have gone. He just disappeared. No clues, no forwarding address, nothing.

Fast forward to 1:00 this afternoon (Saturday). I went into my bathroom. I looked down and almost eliminated the need for using that bathroom. There was a possum in my bathroom! I looked at him, he looked at me and for an instant our eyes locked. He then hissed (I promise, he hissed!) and lunged at me. I made one of those weird noises that people make when they are scared. (Why do people make noises when they are scared? What purpose does that serve? Why did God give us that reaction? I’ll never know. It’s another one of those mysteries, I guess.) It wasn’t a scream, but it was a weird noise nonetheless. I ran out, and shut the door behind me. My bathroom is connected to my bedroom, and I was protecting that bedroom at all costs. Go ahead and tear up the bathroom, just leave my bedroom alone.

My heart was pounding and I was breathing really quickly. I peeked into the bathroom and the possum seemed to doing the same thing. He was cowered in the corner and his body was throbbing up and down with every quick breath he took. I got a closer look at him through the crack in the door. He didn’t seem to be missing any appendages from the trap incident. He wasn’t carting around a trap. Amazing.

I went out into the kitchen and realized that this possum must have sent out invitations to my house. There was a noise under my sink. I opened the up cupboard and there was another possum under there! I began thinking that maybe I was in the middle of a science fiction story in which rat traps don’t kill the possums, but actually makes another copy of it when activated. How else could I explain the fact that one possum turned into two?

At this point, I was thoroughly freaked out. I wanted those possums gone, the sooner the better.

I called my landlord Mary Jo (because that was her name) and told her I had possums. She told me that she would call someone right away. That conversation was pretty uneventful, and I don’t think I can make the dialogue between her and me any more interesting or funny, so I won’t even try. What I can tell you about is what happened next. That certainly was interesting.

About an hour later, a truck pulls up in my driveway. Have you ever seen the movie Arachnophobia? Remember the part that John Goodman plays? This guy reminds me of John Goodman from this movie. A nice guy, but just . . . well . . . funny. Funny in an unintentional kind of way. Big, sloppy and dumpy looking. I didn’t know his name, but he looked like his name should be Bubba. If anyone ever deserved to be called Bubba, he was it. Bubba came walking up to my house.

“How ya’ doin?” Bubba asked. And before I could answer, Bubba responded for me. “A lot better if we can get rid of these little buggers, huh?”

“Yep,” I told him and did a polite little laugh. But I was thinking, is this guy really my only hope? Is this my only chance of being rid of the possums?

He came in and immediately strapped on his knee pads.

Yes, you read that correctly. Knee pads. I never thought that in an exterminator’s tool kit, one of the items would be knee pads. But Bubba put them on.

He asked me where the possums were. I pointed to the sink, so he made his way there. He got down on the floor and shined his flashlight under the sink. He stopped, sat up, and said, “Whew!”

“What?” I asked, thinking he found the possum and the trap, or maybe, just maybe, he solved one of the mysteries.

Bubba looked at me and said, “I’m sweaty!”

I looked at Bubba. Sweaty? Is that some sort of exterminator’s lingo or something? What did he mean, sweaty?

“Give me a paper towel,” he said. So I rushed over to get him one.

Apparently, to an exterminator, ‘sweaty’ means the same thing that it means to you and me. He wiped his face and arms off with the paper towel and went back to work.

Bubba kept asking me where the possums were and he kept putting glue traps on the ground. Glue traps are simply a way to trap the possum on a piece of really sticky cardboard. It doesn’t kill the possum; it just traps them so they can’t go anywhere.

So I asked him, “How do I kill the possums once they get stuck?”

“Oh, ya’ just getcha a little gun and shoot ‘em,” he explained.

A little gun? A little gun!? Are you kidding? I may live in redneck country, but I am not a redneck. I didn’t get my complimentary “little gun” upon taking residence here.

So I told him, “ I don’t have a little gun.”

“OK, just call me,” he said.

OK, Bubba, I thought. I have no idea who you are. I don’t even know your name. Would I look in the phone book under B for Bubba or S for Sweaty?

So I told him, “OK.”

I have no idea what I’m going to do if a possum comes along and steps on that trap. Maybe he’ll just starve to death.

Bubba went out to his truck to get some poison to put under the house. He came back and informed me that he forgot his poison to put under the house. He said he would have to come back later. “Ok, I’ll be home for a while,” I told him.

“Well, I can’t come back until Monday at the earliest,” he said.
Monday???!!! Are you serious? What if the possums don’t get caught? What if I don’t get me a little gun? What if there’s more than one Sweaty Bubba in the phone book? A million thoughts swirled through my head as he turned to go. I felt like Rose from Titanic when she was in the freezing water and the rescue boat was passing by. “Come back! Come back!” I felt like screaming. “Don’t leave me here with these possums!”

But he left. And here I sit, constantly looking over my shoulder to see if there is a possum watching, waiting for me. If you never hear from me again, you’ll know why. The possums might have won.

I’ll keep you posted . . .

(Just as a follow up to this story-- I did end up gettin' me a little gun. It was a little air gun, similar to a BB gun, but looked more like a pistol. That was mother's day weekend when all of this happened. On Sunday afternoon, I was talking to my mom on the phone and a possum ran through the living room. I quick put the phone down and starting shooting. Do you remember Jeff Foxworthy and his "you might be a redneck" jokes? Well, I got back on the phone and told my mom, "you might be a redneck if you interrupt your mother's day phone call to shoot the possum running through your living room!" Such a surreal moment . . . )