An Odd Story

Last night, here in Townsville, woke up to a loud crash.  Raced out to find a wild possum had fallen through the shutters into the kitchen and was scrambling around in the sink.  It wasn't even remotely scared and looked up at me calmly with very familiar amber eyes. Yes, definitely, I thought of my late and beautiful and greatly missed rottweiller, Jupiter.

Anyway, I grabbed a tea towel to pick it up but then ... well, totally being Denise, I decided instead to use the same hand signals I used to use with my rotties ... and then was very astonished when it obeyed.

A wild animal obeying hand signals?  You'll probably find it easier to believe when I get back to HK and post the photos in here.

What happened was it was scrambling around in the sink so I held up my hand "Stop!" and it immediately stopped, so I signalled "Climb up!" and it climbed out ... and I was so astonished I signalled "Stay!" and raced off for my camera and when I got back it was still in position, so I snapped that.  Then I signalled "Walk in that direction!" towards the door and it did, so I opened the door and let it out:

I'm so sorry now I didn't film the sequence but I never expected it to be so interesting.

Later:

Told Richard he should call the possum Jupiter in memory and he said ... "You never name any animal you plan to kill!" 

Guess this is somewhat like that famous line the old lady civet-cat owner said to her pet civet-cat as she handed it over, during the SARS crisis, to be culled by the authorities "Please come back to me again, only next time don't be a civet-cat."  This is more like "Please come back to me again, but only as a Rottweiller."