A couple nights ago, Jesse, the neighbors, and I were on the porch drinking. At one point Jesse and I went inside, and Jesse swore he saw “a critter scamper across the kitchen” and into my room. Well, we looked around, even picked up the air mattress, but didn’t find anything. Later when I went to bed, I thought my room smelled funny, but you know how your nose gets used to smells after a few minutes. I thought, Jesse was just drunk, but figured if he did see something “bigger than a mouse but smaller than a raccoon,” whatever it was would be in the closet. (Been there, done that.)

So I shut the closet door and went to bed.

Yesterday Jesse continued to stand by his story, but neither Ray or I saw anything. “The house does have a funk about it,” Ray said. “It has a certain patine.” Last night after blogging, I looked in the closet, didn’t find anything, and shut the door again. When I didn’t see anything in the room either, I turned down the lights, crawled in bed, grabbed the extra pillow off the floor, and settled in to look at Facebook. That’s funny, I thought. I think the pillow moved by my head. Like, I could have sworn something shifted by the right side of my face.

Calm down, I thought. It’s just the air mattress settling. So I put my phone away, closed my eyes, and–holy shit–the pillow moved again. Y’all, I said every curse word I know, immediately levitated out of bed, and threw on the lights. By this time I was thinking the mystery critter was under my pillow, but when I looked at the bed and saw the pillow moving like a Jim Henson puppet, I realized it was IN my pillow.

I wish I were kidding.

I kept thinking, Just pick up the pillowcase and take it outside. Come on. You can do it. But then I imagined something from a Stephen King novel and pictured myself bleeding, so I did what any self-respecting person would do–I threw another pillow on top of the critter pillow, screamed for Jesse, and asked, “Do you feel like being a man?” Well, fortunately he did. Grabbing the pillow, he walked out of the room and woke up Ray for the big reveal, then we all headed to the porch–at one-thirty in the morning.

Having blogged every day for nearly six months now, I’m starting to recognize a story when I see one, so I grabbed my phone and recorded Jesse coaxing the animal out of the pillow case. Ray and I were backed up against one side of the porch, and Jesse and the pillow creature were in the middle. It took a moment, but eventually a head popped out–a baby possum head. Oh my god, I was in bed with that. It could have bitten my face off. As Jesse pulled back the pillow case more, the entire possum lay there on the porch, I guess playing dead like a–well–possum. Meanwhile, Ray named it Beauregard and said they should keep it as a pet.

Did anyone miss the part where I was in bed with a real, live possum? I’m still shuddering just thinking about it. (Here’s a link to the video–UNedited for language.)

Just after I stopped filming, Beauregard scurried off the porch and into the bushes, but Jesse–who likes animals and clearly has different standards for bravery than I do–put on a pair of gloves, picked him up, and brought him back to the porch. Then Jesse and Ray started looking up information on Google. They found out possums “have a bad rap” and aren’t as scary as everyone thinks they are. Like, it’s really rare for them to get rabies, and some people keep them as pets, even though it’s illegal in many places or at least requires special permission. But none of that swayed me–I kept thinking, Oh hell no. I told Ray, “I’ve been saying I wanted someone to sleep with, but I can see I should have been more specific.”

Still, I guess Jesse is some sort of Florence Nightingale for rodents because he made Beauregard a home out of a box and gave him food and water. (I keep calling Beauregard a he, but he may have been a she. Gender is so confusing these days.)

About this time I went inside to look around my room and put things back in order. My sheets were completely off the bed, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think I’d been ejected off the mattress. So I made my bed again, checked all the other pillows for possums, and–thank god–didn’t find any. What I did find, however, was the reason the room smelled so funny. Beauregard had shit on the curtains. (Reason number 27 why NOT to pool your curtains on the ground.)

Taking down the curtains, I found Ray in the kitchen and asked him what to do with them. “Throw them away,” he said. Then he gave me a Glade candle to help with the odor, so I left it burning in the room while I headed back outside. I guess no one sleeps in Ray’s neighborhood, since when I got to the porch, the girl and boy from next door were there. Y’ALL, SHE WAS PETTING THE POSSUM LIKE A KITTY CAT. Maybe I would have thought this was cute–even wanted to try it–if Beauregard hadn’t caused me to jump out of my skin, but all I could think was, I just can’t–I just can’t even with the pillow possum petting.

About the time Jesse put Beauregard in the pocket of his sweat shirt, I went to bed. Before I crawled under the sheets, I checked the pillows once more, blew out the candle, and thanked the good lord my face was still in tact. Eventually, I fell asleep.

This morning Beauregard was gone. Jesse said he figured he crawled out through the handle holes on the side of the box. Ray said Beauregard stayed long enough to shit all over the box just like he had the curtains. We all decided all the yard work probably shook up the little guy and that he came in under the back door, since it’s currently missing a threshold and there’s a nice-sized gap at the bottom.

When I looked up the spiritual meaning of possums online, it said they represent the path of least resistance and being able to lay low while the universe works “behind the scenes to fulfill your dreams.” They also remind us that it’s okay to be passive. And whereas I’ve spent plenty of time being passive in my relationships over the years (and am working on it), I tend to be anything but passive in the rest of my life. Rather, I prefer being active. Often I describe myself as a “get shit done” kind of person. I mean, my last three blogs have been about literally bleeding to transform Ray’s yard, and whether it’s transforming a yard, opening a dance studio, or starting a blog, my primary thought is usually, “I’m going to make this happen.” But I’m reminded tonight–by a passive pillowcase possum of all things–that life requires balance. I don’t have to make everything happen. What’s more, I can’t. As much as I hate to admit it, there are things beyond my control, things like who reads this blog or–apparently–who ends up in my bed. So perhaps, thanks to Beauregard, I’m being encouraged once again to surrender, to let go even more, and, after all these years of leading, follow for a change.