Our old neighbors were a really cute young couple. He’s a Diplomatic staffer from South Asia. They’d been posted all over the world and had been to some pretty sketchy places. They seemed pretty much unflappable to me. Until that one hot summer night.

It was quite late at night and I was supposed to pick Husband up from work. I walked out the front door to find the neighbors and their dinner guests – decked out in gorgeous formal clothes – returning from a nice after-dinner stroll. They were standing in my yard, huddled together for safety.

As soon as I stepped out on the porch my neighbor yelled to me, “Don’t go near your car! Underneath it…It is…The Creature.”

After a moment his wife added, in equally hushed and reverential tones, “A rat. Biggest rat I ever saw.” Okay, from the stories this gal has told me, I was certain she knew from big rats. This made me more than a little nervous.

I grabbed a big flashflight and pointed it under the car.

Now, when someone tells you there’s a rat, and you go looking for a rat, what does your brain do? It tells you that you’re seeing a rat. Even when it’s actually a 20+ pound opossum with a chip on it’s shoulder.

Scared me, that’s for sure. The Creature, however, was unfazed.

In fact, it was pretty surly. We were afraid it was sick, but opossums do freaky things to scare off predators, so it’s hard to tell. It just didn’t want to budge. I didn’t want to run it over, but I really needed to leave.

Finally, someone suggested that I get in the car and honk the horn.

So, with much slapstick hilarity involved, I got into the car without any Creature-induced ankle damage. Now here’s the best part of the story: when I jumped into the car my first instinct was to hit the doorlock with my elbow. I still don’t know why. Because a locked car door was the one thing standing between me and certain death at the hands of the Creature, I suppose.

End of the story: horn scared opossum, opossum waddled off, we all lived happily ever after.

My neighbors transfer, by the way, had nothing to do with The Creature. That I know of, anyway.