The sneezing in the wall.

So....yesterday Will again said "What's that noise?"....No, it wasn't another bush fire, he said this sounded more like sneezing and it seemed to be coming from somewhere in the corner near the dining tableI heard nothing but checked the mouse trap behind the mandolin case just in case...Oh, two 'cases' so close together...not good.Anyway the trap was empty and that was the end of it until today...Will went off to spend much of the day up to his elbows in whey and I was left alone to twiddle my thumbs at Frogknot.It is very quiet here. In fact it is so quiet that we can both hear our hearts beating like the thrumming of a distant engine in the night.Today however there were all manner of noises, creaks and groans from the roof, the scrapings of the overhanging branches on the corrugated iron, the skitterings and slitherings of heaven knows what above the ceiling...it was not so quiet...and then I heard the sneezing that Will had mentioned the previous day but it seemed to be coming from the wall.Peering closer into one of the many cracks that have appeared in the wall since the house began to crumble I spotted something moving...which looked suspiciously like some creature grooming itself. I immediately thought 'RAT!'I fetched a knife...no, not with intention of rodenticide, in fact it was a butter knife and hardly suited for dispatching a rat but much more suited for spreading one upon one's toast....but I didn't intend to do that either, no, I wanted to widen the crack to get a better look.This is what I saw...Now, even I know that that is not a rat. No, it was Possum 'Galore'!We were talking recently, I forget where and with whom, but someone mentioned that possums smell...well, yes let me confirm that they do indeed pong!