I had a very eventful weekend. My brother got engaged to be married, and I had a visitor yesterday afternoon when I came home from the grocery store.

I turned the corner onto my street and drove into my garage just as usual, only to notice something large and furry waddling into the back left corner of my garage, behind the recycling container I never use, since I can’t remember what day to put the recycling out.

Well crap. Now what?

I wasn’t sure what was in my garage, but I was reasonably sure that it would, if cornered, bite. And my garage is small, so the whole thing is more or less corner.

I backed out of the garage, stepped out of my car and locked it, in case the furry thing was smarter than me and could somehow magically open my car doors and go for a joyride. Happens all the time in cartoons.

But it didn’t move. I figured out it was a possum, and it was hoping I’d go away.

I didn’t.

I got a broom from my neighbor’s garage. She happens to be the apartment manager and she has more brooms and shovels than you could shake a stick at, so I didn’t.

I shook the stick (with the broom at the end of it) at the possum instead.

It was not impressed.

So I used the stick to move aside the recycling bin.

It eyed me with all the skepticism a possum could manage.

I poked at it gingerly with the broom, and after a few gentle prods it waddled away, from the left corner of the garage to the right corner of the garage, hiding behind the garbage can I never use. (It was there when I moved in.)

So I moved that garbage can aside and poked at the possum again.

It looked at me, clearly thinking "You moron, I’m a possum. I am a badger with a rat tail and you are a human with a five foot stick."

I lived in the country for 11 years, and I wasn’t having with any of this, so I poked the possum again, a bit harder.

It growled at me.

I narrowed my eyes, thinking: I can’t catch and I can’t throw, but I played tennis for 4 years and golf for 3 in school, and I can hit things really hard.

I prodded the possum again with the broom, and it gave up and waddled out of my garage with only a grumpy, derisive look in my direction.

Unfortunately, it made a hairpin turn and waddled right back into the next garage down.

So I had to tell my apartment manager that I’d bullied a possum into her garage by mistake.

Fortunately, she’s braved many things in her career, including damp basements, feet-tall snow deposits and wasps, so I’m pretty sure she handled it. Her plan was to use the broom and if that didn’t work, to call animal control for a more permanent removal of said possum.

Whether the possum made it to the Great Garage in the Sky or whether, broom-driven, it simply waddled into the third earthly garage (the one on the other side of the apartment manager’s), I don’t know.

But I’ve decided to buy my own garage broom.

Just in case.