Last week I got a call from a distressed homeowner who discovered that she had possums living under her house. First there was the smell, then the animals were sighted, and the power of two-plus-two equaled a call to me.

Some of my coworkers invented a live catch trap, the Skunk Motel, which is specially designed for removing skunks, but it is useful for removing other vermin, too. In this case, all it took was a can of stinky cat food and I caught a possum from under this poor woman's house. Then, today, I caught a second possum (and I didn't even need to look through the plexiglass window at the back of the trap to see what I had caught - I could smell the thing from twenty feet away as soon as I stepped out of my truck). I'm going back again tomorrow to see if there's a third.

This is one of the things I enjoy the most about my job: helping homeowners protect their investment - their house - as well as helping to protect their health. Though possums do have their role in nature, they can vector some very nasty diseases, so when they try to make their homes where people make theirs, the possums have to go.

One possum enters. No possum leaves!