Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [69]
“What shit?” he said.
“The bag in the barn. His,” I said, pointing to Bentley, who was looking at us, first one and then the other, exactly as a child would.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
And I almost gave him a playful shove but then realized that he actually wouldn’t joke about something like this. It was unworthy subject matter.
I explained the situation. “And then when I went out there just two seconds ago, it was gone.”
“It was gone?” He stopped scooping coffee into the filter. He just paused, midair. He said, “Did it blow away?” But I could tell he didn’t think it was the wind. And neither did I.
“Okay,” I said in the same flat tone of voice you hear cops use on TV. “What kind of psycho would go into out barn at night and steal dog shit?”
He let the coffee fall into the filter, and then he hit the switch.
We were silent for a moment.
“I don’t like the idea of somebody walking around here at night,” he said. “We may need to get a submachine gun from your brother.”
That evening we were having dinner, sitting at our long table. The table is long because I had originally purchased it as a combination desk/writing table. But I never write at it, so it’s only for the two of us. So each night we feel as though we are members of a large family, and they prefer not to dine with us.
Bentley sits on the floor between us, praying in his doggie way that a scrap will fall to the floor. Nothing ever falls, but he never gives up hope. I love this about him, his relentless optimism. This is a trait that we share.
He started barking, growling, actually, in a voice he never uses. He ran to the sliding-glass doors and pressed his already mashed-up nose against the glass. He sounded ferocious, like a pit bull. Although only thirty pounds, I could clearly see that if he wanted to, he was capable of causing harm.
“What the fuck?” Dennis said.
I instantly pushed back from the table and ran to the wall. I hit the light and looked out the door.
It was the shit-stealer; this much was clear. And it wasn’t human. This much was also clear. But what the hell it was? This part was entirely unclear. “Oh my God,” I said, my default expression for everything from joy to horror. Inflection is the only difference. Here, it was shock, horror, and curiosity. “Oh my God, you have to see this . . . thing.”
Dennis got up from the table and rushed to my side. He peered out the window and looked at the creature in our backyard.
It had a long nose, thin, like a Swedish man’s penis. A water-balloon–shaped head and a full, hairy body. The tail was pink and at least a foot in length. It had rodent eyes, and it was nuzzling a plastic baggie of Bentley’s shit.
Whatever it was, it was fearless. Because even though I pounded on the glass with my hands and shouted, “Die, motherfucker!” it refused to so much as glance in my direction. Very briefly, it made direct eye contact with Bentley, which caused Bentley to literally jump in surprise.
I went online immediately and did a Google search. Keywords: “snout, Massachusetts, horrid, tail, garbage, pest.”
And to my amazement, I almost immediately located a photograph of the exact creature in our backyard. “It’s a North American opossum,” I called to Dennis.
Neither of us had been able to finish dinner. The creature had a powerful appetite-suppressant effect.
Dennis leaned over my shoulder and peered at the image on the computer screen. “That’s it,” he said, poking the screen with his index finger. Poke, poke, poke. “That’s exactly what the hell it is.” Then he said, “Scroll down and see if it says how to kill it.”
I did this, but unfortunately, I was at a website created by some varmint-lover at a university. Instead of instructions on how to kill, it provided useless information such as life cycle, eating habits (where it didn’t even mention French Bulldog shit), and mating rituals.
We both walked back to the sliding-glass doors and looked. It was still there, though now it was on the prowl. It moved slowly, but I was worried