Having spent many years hunting raccoons, roaming the outdoors and trapping, I’ve had plenty of experiences with possums, some of them terrifying and some of them down right funny.

As for a frightful experience for yours truly – years ago, I set a trap line in a small stream and was running the sets well before daylight. At the time, I was working south of Connersville and work started at 7 a.m.

In the predawn darkness, I would wade the small stream looking for any muskrats caught in my Conibear 110 traps. I usually set the quick-kill traps at the mouth of underwater den entrances.

One particular morning saw four large, prime muskrats coming from the trap line. With the early winter-like temperatures, I knew the fur would keep well in the truck bed during the day. “Rats” were bringing $3 from most fur buyers, but I thought maybe Lester Lutz would pay $4 for prime, extra large muskrats.

After work, I stopped at Lester’s fur shop to sell the four muskrats. Lester had always been fair with me, and he gave me the best price over several fur buyers in the area. Always hospitable, he usually had a pot of coffee on the woodstove and always asked if I would join him in a cup.

Lester may have been the best fur buyer around, but he definitely had the nastiest coffee I’ve ever come across – bar none. The coffee was so strong and thick, you could almost stand a spoon straight up in it. Bitter and black, he would serve his coffee in a cup looking like it was washed sometime the previous spring.

Lester’s fur shop was probably the most horribly disarranged shack I’ve visited, and for me, that is saying a lot. There were feed sacks all over, raw fur hanging from the ceiling and fur stretchers thrown into various piles. The floor was probably last swept during the Great Depression, and there was enough dust on things to make one wonder if somehow Lester had recently experienced the Dust Bowl days.

And his shop smelled. It was hot, about 95 or 100 degrees from the blazing woodstove, and it smelled like raw fur, animal fat, wood smoke and bad coffee. If my wife was asked, she would most likely say Lester’s fur shop was the kind of place I would feel very comfortable in … and she would be right.

Careful not to spill my coffee, I accepted Lester’s offer to have a “sit down” in his old overstuffed chair and visit awhile. When I flopped down, a large cloud of dust blew out of the chair, leaving a light film over the top of my coffee.

In the course of our conversation discussing hunting, trapping, fur prices and various aspects of the outdoors, Lester suddenly looked around the shop and said, “Have you ever seen Old Charlie?”

Not knowing what kind of a critter Old Charlie was, my reply was, “No, I don’t believe I have.”

At that Lester jumped from his chair and said, “He’s around here somewhere. I’ll have to find him for you.”

Gunny sacks and fur boards went flying as Lester began the quest to locate the unknown critter called Old Charlie. Finally, as he reached under a huge pile of dusty gunny sacks next to my chair, he gleefully said, “Here he is! Look him over!”

Suddenly, through the cloud of dust, I found myself choking on my coffee and spilling it all over as Lester grabbed Old Charlie by the tail and dropped the biggest possum I have ever seen right into my lap! If I didn’t have a mouth full of Lester’s foul brew, I believe I would have screamed like a 2-year-old girl.

“There’s Old Charlie!”

Knowing possums have the strongest biting strength of any critter around, I was frozen in terror. It’s been proven a possum can actually bite and crush the leg bone of a large dead horse to get at the bone marrow. And I had this leg bone-biter sitting in my lap looking right at me with its teeth bared.

(Note to readers not well versed in “possumology:” The configuration of a possum’s mouth and jaw bones give it a perpetual look as if smiling or even snarling. Possums are sometimes referred to as “grinners” among well-versed hunters, trappers and other outdoor aficionados.)

With my hands shaking and sweat running down my forehead, I stammered, “Lester! Does Charlie bite?”

“Heavens, no. I’ve had Charlie since I found him as a starved, half-weaned baby a few years ago. He’s like an old dog. Give him a pet or two – and he likes his tummy rubbed.”

Carefully and gingerly, I lightly rubbed the top of Old Charlie’s head with my shaking hand. I was really scared this varmint might quickly turn and snap off a couple of my fingers, and I was surprised when he shut his eyes and rolled over to get into position for a proper tummy-scratching.

I spent the better part of a half-hour scratching and tummy-rubbing Old Charlie. I’d never before encountered a full-grown possum as tame as this. As I left the shop with my $16, I thanked Lester for the buying price, the coffee and the chance to meet Old Charlie.

Covered with dust and hair and smelling of woodsmoke and possum, I was headed for a bath as soon as I got home. I knew as soon as I stepped through the door and my wife took one look and a single sniff, she would say, “You stopped at Lester’s again!”

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments may contact Jack Spaulding by email at jackspaulding@hughes.net or by writing to him in care of this publication.