Killing the possum – conflicting advice

I shot the possum.

On Friday afternoon, he came right up to our back door again to look around for spilled cat food, and I poked my rifle out of the bathroom window and shot at him until he stopped moving.

To the best of my understanding, it was my job to do this. About a month ago, after I accidentally brushed into the possum while rummaging through boxes in our garage, I called a friend for advice. Our friend Kurt has been farming all his life and I know that he has a deep respect for all living things. He said that the right thing to do in this situation would be to shoot the possum, and that if we felt uneasy doing it, then we should probably ask a neighbor to do it for us. He noted that this particular animal had little fear people, and that possums can sometimes be aggressive. Our friend also expected that it would work hard to eat our baby chicks in the spring.

We talked about trapping the possum in a live trap, and then driving far away and letting him out, but that did not sound right either. It is not really possible for us to drive "out into the country" to release an animal because we are already there. The 120 acres of woods across the street are about as wild as it gets in this land of corn and soybean fields. We expected that if we were to drove down the road and let the possum out, then he would head straight for someone else’s barn or shed because it was unafraid of humans. That did not seem right either.

So, we bought a gun.

I never expected to be doing anything like this, and along with the awful image in my head of the possum’s last thrashing, I am holding sense of thrill that I was able to do the job. I don't know what to think of the grief or the excitement. Probably I shouldn't spend time thinking about either. I need to focused on the movement of the Spirit, as best as I am able to understand it.

Staying focused and grounded in God feels especially important right now because there are conflicting opinions in my head, and I don't feel like either one of them is fully my own. On one hand, by killing the possum, we were following advice grounded in experience, given to us by somebody cares about us. We need that kind of advice because there are so many things that we do not know about living in the country. Although we did not move so far from home, in some ways, it feels like we've moved to another nation, and I would feel arrogant to forge ahead without the guidance of farmers we trust.

On the other hand, we have spent most of our adult lives around people who would not feel easy with the idea of shooting possums. A friend of mine from Minneapolis came down to visit yesterday and was talked at length about how it is arrogant for people to feel they have the right to kill an animal for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She says she hopes I never do anything like that again because she concerned that doing violence to the possum might hurt my spirit, and she wondered if I might become desensitized to brutality.

What she said is very possibly true, but I expect we’ll continue to feel like we're not in a place where we can follow her advice.