Evil Incarnate
- Korben Dallas
- May 1, 2014
- 3 min read
April 2nd, 2014… 0300 Hours
Signal 78
Assist Other Agency
The call came out a bit funny sounding. I wasn’t exactly confident I knew what I was walking into. Dispatch advised Fire Rescue was in need of assistance. An elderly female had been bitten by a rabid and loose opossum, and the opossum was still inside the house somewhere. Unsure of the dangers, Fire Rescue wanted someone in the house with some measures of safety, IE - a gun, baton… taser?
I arrived on scene at about the same time as Fire Rescue. The paramedics disembark from their engine and I ask them, “What’s going on?” They advise the same as dispatch. They advise they just need someone who can take out the opossum, if it comes to that.
I enter the house, followed closely by Fire Rescue. The elderly female, probably about 78 years of age, is sitting in the living room, surrounded by her family. She points into the kitchen, “That THING is in there!” Blood was dripping from her left hand. Fire Rescue jumped onto her immediately and began cleaning the wound, eventually wrapping it up in gauze. It wasn’t a vicious scarring wound, merely a flesh wound.
I enter into the kitchen area and back into the den. It’s a wide open space I found myself in, only lightly caged in, but not enough to hold back a rabid opossum should it try to escape. I found the little bugger tucked away in the corner, hiding between boxes behind the computer desk. At first, it seemed like this was going to be just like any other animal complain: find the animal, remove the animal from the area, and go about my day.
I deployed by baton and poked at it to get a sense of its temperament. It’s not thrilled. I’ve never heard a opossum hiss before, or seen one bare its teeth. They are hideously evil creatures. Spawns of hell, no doubt.
I reach forward and attempt to grab it by the tail. I was going to pull him out of his hiding spot and into my arms so I could throw him outside. Don’t worry! I was using knife proof gloves at the time. The opossum reared back and tried to bite me. I wasn’t having that, so I let the little jerk go. He scurried back, further into the cave it would call its hiding spot. Constantly it hissed and growled and snipped and snapped at my fingers. It was getting to a point I couldn’t control the animal long enough to really get it out of there.
So I did what any sensible person would do… I tazed him. “POP! tht..tht… tht… tht…” The animal fell over to it’s side and began to twitch. The Five Second Ride, it’s called. Five seconds of, albeit agonizing pain, pain which I had to suffer in academy, was rolling through this opossums muscles. When it was over, it got up, looked around, and was very tazed and confused. It walked out from its hiding spot and saw me; he was NOT happy with me. The opossum began to charge! However, it clearly forgot I had my taser still probed in him. The Five Second Ride.
This time, while discombobulated, I took the chance to place a trash can over the animal. It was finally trapped. Piss and opossum spray littered the floor; it was a stink I couldn’t forget if I, myself, went into shock therapy. I lifted the waste basket into the air, and removed the opossum from the home, setting him free in the back yard.
“Hotel Five - Dispatch.”
“Go ahead, Hotel Five…”
“Taser deployed… against the rodent.”
“10-4”
There was a moment of awkward silence, I could hear the stares of everyone in my agency wondering what just happened. I could hear the tires burning as my friends and coworkers were speeding along to get to the scene to see if it was true. I knew I was not going to live this one down for quite a while.
I entered the house just in time to hear Fire Rescue tell the elderly woman she was fine, to stay home, that there was no need to go to the hospital. I got my high fives, my blank stares, a little bit of laughing. In the end, the opossum was no longer in the house to harm this family. I did… some measure of service.
