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 Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2011 1:51 pm
Griffin "Hawkeye" Westwood, professional camper and presently a junior counselor and therefore babysitter, was having quite the time at camp. She was meeting so many new people and getting to do so many fun, outdoorsy things in such a lovely place. There were an awful lot of animals around, too, and Griffin had gotten a few pretty pictures of a deer here and a raccoon. She'd heard other people talk of seeing other animals, though. Hawks, bunnies, skunks, what have you. The normal population of a forest, right?
However, she hadn't seen any while in camp, that is, until she saw an opossum scurry across her path and under a chair on the porch of cabin. She was rather taken aback by the sight. It was the dusky part of the day, when they would be beginning to come out. Maybe some campers had startled or chased it. She frowned and decided to follow it and shoo it in the direction of the forest and away from the door of the cabin. Possum could be dangerous creatures and have rabies, so she was glad she'd seen it before campers. However, when she approached it, it bared its teeth and she backed down for a second. In that instant, it ran past her and into the cabin.
Oh crap...
She just hoped there wasn't anyone inside. Which cabin was this, anyway? Baneberry? Ohhh.... that was the senior counselors' cabin. Oh no.
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 7:07 pm
A very loud screech came from within the cabin.
Painite was a hardened warrior. She fought senshi and pages and more than that she had fun doing it. She was confident, devious, and well in control of her ability. She was a fighter, damn it.
Except when it came to razor fanged woodland creatures. They were not enemies. They were not things she wanted to fight. They were demons and she hated them.
"SOMEONE GET THIS THING OUT OF HERE!"
Gently was standing on the sofa, screaming for assistance. She imagined most if not all the other senior counselor's were out. She had only come back to get her clipboard. Instead she had been met by this monster on the way out, and she was now at its mercy.
Some Head Counselor she would have ruefully thought, if she weren't so busy trying to scramble over the sofa to get away from it.
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Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 12:45 pm
A scream split the air and that answered that. She cringed, but it wasn't her fault, right? She couldn't be blamed for nature. She poked her head in and saw Kookaburra, the head counselor and sheepishly said, "Uh, hi. I can try to help." She quickly looked around saw a broom standing in the corner. As soon as she had it in hand, however, she seemed to loose sight of the possum.
"Do you know where it went?" There was a new sense of urgency due to how frantically Gently had screamed. As soon as she'd asked, though, she heard the thing hiss. She flinched, not a fan of possums either. Their beady eyes and rat tails were so gross. But they were also the only marsupial in North America! That was cool, right? Ehh.
She saw a glint of its eyes under a chair and to the head counselor, she said "Don't move! I see it!"
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Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:16 pm
Gently was still marooned on the sofa, standing on the back of it with one foot while the other was on the cushions. She did not look very stable.
"I don't know! It skittered awfully somewhere and I can't see it," she was acting like it had turned the room into lava, or touching anywhere it had been would in fact turn her into a possum as well. They were just so ugly and vicious, she could not fathom being near one. She was fine with bears and snakes and raccoons, but possums she had not prepared for.
She probably should have known better than to think her mortal enemy would leave her alone out here in its natural habitat.
Hearing the hissing, Gently let out another yelp. If Griffin were only a few feet closer, she probably would have been the next thing Gently tried to scale in her efforts to flee the evil intruding animal.
"GET IT. GET IT OUT OF HERE. BUT DON'T GET BITTEN." She looked horrified. "It's probably got rabies!"
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 12:41 am
Gently's yelling wasn't much helping Griffin's concentration, but she tried to calm herself for the sake of the animal. The two of them made eye contact, and with constant 'ssshhh's and 'it's okay's, she got closer. It then hissed and lashed out at her, but she jumped back, avoiding any injury.
The possum then darted from under the chair to under the sofa where Gently towered, but finding itself too squat and fat to get under it entirely, it then flopped over onto its side, seemingly having died of fright or perhaps the head counselor's screams killed it?
Griffin approached it slowly and put a finger to her lips. "Don't move." Gosh, she hoped it didn't have rabies, but there was a good chance that it did. Bats, raccoons, skunks, and possums were the most likely to have rabies. She just had yet to see bats and skunks, and then her checklist would be complete.
She got close enough to poke at the possum with the end of her broom, and it didn't move. So it was dead. Or just playing possum.
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 10:57 am
"DON'T TOUCH IT," Gently said, clearly changing from her earlier assertion to get it away from her. She was going to be flopping back and forth quite a lot. She didn't want Griffin to get hurt by the evil possum, and she did not want it to remain in the cabin.
It was a tough spot.
When it came in her direction she started to panic. Not started, perhaps, she had been panicking from the start. She started to panic harder. Captain Painite did not let fear get to her, but that did not mean she was without it. Battles and death and killing were all in their own league. Disgusting, horrifying monster animals of death and illness?
She was scared of those.
Biting her lips closed, she stared wide eyed at Griffin. She silently pleaded to be saved. She watched as the other poked the possum and she frowned, shaking her head.
"I don't think it's dead," she squeaked.
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 11:48 pm
Griffin would never ever touch a possum. Maybe a different, cuter wild animal. But never a possum. She respected all nature, but she didn't have to like it. And she didn't like possums that much. She furrowed her brows and with the bristled end of the broom, she did her best to try and scoot it towards the door. "I don't wanna!"
Without any fuss, the possum allowed itself to be brushed, maybe because it was dead? It lay motionless with glossy eyes and its mouth open. It didn't seem to be breathing, either. It looked like the fight was almost over!
Of course, once it got to the hurdle of a rug, the possum miraculously sprang back to life and cornered itself, hissing at both of the counselors. This would never end! "Oh crap."
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 1:06 pm
Possums had a reputation for being dirty little liars. And Gently was not going to be fooled by them. Yes, they had fur and they were small-ish, and their faces were cute at certain angles to some people. But on the inside they were made of anger and venom, and their vicious teeth were made more horrible by the way they could just hiss out of no where. They were little demons of flesh and fur.
"Be caaaareful!" She whined again, watching as Griffin tried to hit it with the broom. Of course, she wasn't hitting it at all and that was disappointing. Zan would hate her for these thoughts, but Gently wanted nothing more then for the evil creature to be thrown outside by any means necessary.
Then it was up and hissing at them and Gently leaped away to hide behind Griffin. She gripped her tightly, nails digging into the younger girl's arms.
"You've ticked it off!" She accused, as if she hadn't just been championing the act of throwing the thing out, "throw something at it!" She looked around for something to follow her own advice with. "We need to get it to go outside!"
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Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 10:33 am
As the possum hissed at the girls, Griffin's eyes began to well up with tears. Maybe it was because Gently's nails were digging in so hard, or maybe because she was scared. Definitely both. She whined and whimpered. She'd gone into this fight bravely but that was before Gently's panic began to rub off on her. Maybe they should get a boy to take care of it. Or abandon the cabin completely. Those both seemed like pretty good ideas to her.
"I-I didn't mean to!" She managed to whine out a defense. She wasn't too scared of possums as a species or idea, but this one was just so mad. She tried to poke at it with the broom, but she was many feet away and it didn't have much effect. The possums just stayed in the corner.
Wait.
Possums!?
There were three little beady sets of eyes. So it was a mother and her babies? They must have just emerged from her pouch. Which meant that they were less than three months old, according to some show on Animal Planet. The little babies scrambled atop their mother's back and Griffin made a little noise. Now this was a triple threat!
Griffin scooted closer, still between the family and Gently, and asked her, eyes still locked onto the Momma. "Can you stand over there?" She pointed to a spot near the doorway. "I'll shoo them towards the door and you'll keep them from running back inside." Griffin just prayed that this would work.
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Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 11:16 pm
How the girls had managed to corner the worlds angriest possum, Gently would never know. But it seemed like just her luck, to be trapped by something she hated and feared so much, helpless to escape its evil advances and intentions.
Did possums eat people? This one probably would. Or just give them mutated possum rabies and the whole camp would turn into a scene from Quarantine.
Gently's imagination was running away, hand in hand, with her fear.
When she saw the tiny mutant possums she let out a horrible screech that probably didn't sound too lovely in Griffin's ear. The poor Head Counselor was reduced to a helpless damsel in distress, traumatized by her worst fear.
"They're MULTIPLYING," she moaned miserably. Were they like mushrooms? Would they just keep spawning and appearing and filling the whole cabin with possums? She liked this cabin: it was the best one. Why didn't someone else have these problems?
Could they convince it to go to a different cabin?
At Griffin's order, Gently stared at her blankly for a very long moment. Keep them from running back inside? Maybe if she was given a rocket launcher. Still, she found herself nodding and scooting over to the spot she was assigned.
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Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2011 11:02 am
Sure, she was a little bit off-balance because of that scream that blew out an eardrum, but Griffin gritted her teeth with steely determination. Or so she wouldn't scream too. She danced nervously around the possums, broom in front of her the whole time while the mother hissed in her direction. Was that foam or spit around its mouth?! She wasn't sure. For now, however, the only thing that seemed contagious was Gently's fear.
Finally she managed to poke the momma possum with the broom and she went scurrying along the baseboard like a rat, glaring at the women with its beady eyes. It tried to pass between them and head further into the darker recesses of the cabin, like under chairs or beds, but with another poke from the broom and pillars of legs in the way, the possum scuttled out the door and then bolted up a tree a few yards away.
Griffin's blue eyes tracked her until she was gone from sight and she let out all of her breath. "Finally! It's done!" She gave Gently a weak smile. It had been such an ordeal that she just wanted to go back to her cabin and sleep until noon. That is, with all the doors and windows properly secured so there wouldn't be another event like this.
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Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 10:14 am
Gently watched as the possums scurried outside, relief hitting her immediately. She let out a laugh and hugged Griffin tightly to her for a moment, as if they had just saved the world from a terrible evil, forever. Of course, if she had known better, she would realize that definition of terrible evil would be quite different between them.
But it didn't matter, of course.
Pulling away, she laughed and clapped Griffin hard on the back.
"Well, I don't know what all the fuss was about! They were just little animals. No need to get so scared, counselor." She grinned, knowing full well that she had been the one completely freaking out. But she didn't want to dwell on it, and it was much better to laugh at things then let them bring you too far down.
She chuckled.
"Thank you for your help there. I don't know what got into me, but ah. Let's pretend that whole thing did not happen, hm? I'll have a hard time enjoying camp if I'm constantly worried about that thing coming back in here... so we'll say it's gone for good."
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Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 11:51 am
Griffin hadn't been expecting the change in demeanor from the head counselor to be so night and day. She hadn't anticipate the hug either. She patted Kookaburra on her back, for lack of anything better to do while she was trapped. The whole while she tried to hide the dumbstruck expression on her face. Her the scared one?! Well sure, she'd been anxious the whole while, and yes, she would admit being frightened, she hadn't been the one climbing on the furniture.
"Uh. Yeah."
She nodded her 'you're welcome' and an agreement. "I'm sure it learned its lesson!" She turned to leave but stopped in the doorway. "Let's pretend what whole thing didn't happen?" With a grin she insinuated that she'd never breathe a word of it. After all, what happened at camp stayed at camp, right?
On the walk back to her own cabin she tread carefully and was wary of walking under any trees, lest a possum drop out of one and land on her. It seemed that Kookaburra's fear had slightly rubbed off on the junior counselor, if only for the night.
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