One 'Possum,Two 'Possum,Three 'Possum-WHEE!

Yesterday, I had everyone come and help clean out the chicken coop and bee cellar. It was a nice enough day and not real hot, so that is always good when you are doing hard physical labor.
Brother Dave and his son Kyle, showed up at about 10:30 and we sat and talked to Larry for a bit and then decided to get started.
I bundled Lar up and sat him on the porch with Elvis and we started the fires burning (I had my burn permit and checked the wind). We kind of musheled around the yard at first cuz none of us wanted to head into either dark hole, but, finally, we went into the bee cellar and started to pull out wood.
You have to understand that Mom was an antique dealer for 45 years and her specialty was country furniture, so, when she went to auctions and got dilapidated furniture, she would have Larry and Dad take it apart and store the pieces to repair other pieces. We has drop leaves and leaves, sides, drawers, tops, hankie boxes...you get the picture. Parts is parts. And most of it has been attacked by post beetles or water damaged, and had to go.
So, Phrog gets there and the pulling starts in earnest. He is kind of tossing stuff aside if he didn't know what to do with it, and I walked in and saw a pile of plastic bags.
"What is this?" says I.
"I don't know." Says Phrog.
"Well, it's probably something scary, but I'll check" and I grab the bags and lift and start shrieking and back peddling, pushing Biza as I scramble for daylight! It was a opposum.... Alive! YUCK! They are not the most beautiful creatures God put on this earth, but, I think I scared the poor thing nearly to death because it hightailed under the furnace and wouldn't budge.
He kind of put the kabosh on much more being done in the bee cellar, but....now we have to go to the chicken coop and I KNOW that something is dead in there and I don't want to be the one to find it.
Brother Dave starts pulling stuff and stacking it towards the door and Biz and I stack it into the cart and then haul it up to the blazing inferno.
By now, Phrog has arrived and is in charge of the fire and he has the flames shooting 15 feet in every direction. It is hot enough to scorch your eyebrows at 20 paces. Dave keeps saying "I think whatever it is that smells is under there" and he points to the raised floor. Whatever, let's just get it done.
At 2:30, Dave and Kyle had to go, but Katie arrived and she took over handing stuff out of the chicken coop because she couldn't smell anything and thought we were all lying.
She is joking and cracking us all up and then she lets loose a shriek and Runs out of there like a cat afire! YUP! She found it! She runs up the yard doing the ol' dry heave bit, but, By now, Thomas arrived, so we talked him into scooping up George to dispose of him. I dug a hole and Tom scraped it up and decides to chase Katie around the yard with George hanging off of the shovel. We finally got him to put it in the hole- as Katie went over and puked up her lunch. The baby wouldn't get back into the chicken coop after that.
As we are working, Tom keeps up a running patter with the possums- because he's a thinking that there is probably another corpus delecti somewhere under the piles of wood. The smell was enough to gag a maggot, but, Tom just kept a-going....saying he would probably have to burn his clothes after he got home. And then, yes indeed, we have another possum. He is way deader than the first one. And way bigger. He didn't fit into the hole I dug, so Biza went and scooped him out and made the hole bigger.
We finished pulling wood shortly after finding corpse 2 and concentrated on having a couple of beers(Not me, I do not drink anymore) and watching the giant pile of burning wood.
Biz and I were pretty pooped by bedtime last night, but, I am happy that we accomplished so much. And Tom says that he will come and rebuild the chicken coop so that he can use it to store wood for projects that he is working on, so that is a really good thing too!