Don't We Live in a Major Metropolitan Area?

First we have a skunk in the drive-way, and last Saturday night we had a opossum. I mean, seriously, I haven't even seen this many critters on like a float trip and we live in LA. What's up with that?

We realized something was going on when Zoey wouldn't stop barking at the neighbors tree by our drive-way. Mike went to check it out and noticed that there was an animal in the tree. Upon further inspection (through my office window) we realized it was a pesky opossum. We had to get the thing to leave or Zoey was just going to go nuts when we let her outside, and we didn't really need another "skunk" incident on our hands.

So how hard is it to get opossums out of trees? Hard. We first tried throwing small rocks at it-nothing. Then we moved onto water--first we sprayed the tree with the water bottle and that did nothing but make the opossum bury further into the tree. Then we dowsed it with a big bucket of water. Nothing. Finally, my brave husband went outside (armed with a golf umbrella should the opossum jump all the way across the drive-way and attack...yeah right) and handed me the hose through the window. Well, it took about 30 seconds of spraying that tree with water, but the opossum finally left. He was so wet. We didn't want to hurt the little guy, but he needed to go. Had he left after our warnings with the spray bottle he might not have gotten so wet.

Man, what's next? A coyote?!