Once, when I was working as a volunteer at a wildlife rehab center, I got a call from a woman who was absolutely hysterical, sobbing and weeping and hyperventilating. I got her calmed down a bit and asked why she was calling. Between ragged gasps, she managed to stammer: "A, a, a...a rat! A hu-hu-hu-HUGE rat! In my garbage!" I kept trying to calm her down -- I mean, I knew people wre scared of rats and mice, but geez -- and finally she said, "And it's MUTATED!"DCrom wrote: Add that to an appearance rather like an overgrown rat (think of a rat the size of a LARGE cat) and it was nothing you want to confront from a distance of 10 inches.
"What?!" I was confused. A mutant rat, in Berkeley?
"YES," she yelled. "It's, it's HUGE, and it's grey, and IT HAS HUMAN HANDS! A BABY'S HANDS!" and started crying again. I told her I'd come right over, knowing what I'd find.
Yep. It was a possum.
Someone also brought me a "duck", which turned out to be a blackbird. "I *thought* it looked weird," the lady said when I told her what she really had in the box.