Roof monsters in the night

Midnight. A furtive knock on my bedroom door. A trembling, teenage voice calls out, "Becky..? Are you awake? What's all that noise?"

The teenager is my 17 year old brother who's staying for his holiday. The noise he's so worried about has been going on for the last 20 minutes. It can only be described as an all out assault on our tin roof. It sounds like somebody escaping from the police several times over. Whatever it is is romping, yes romping, up and down, and generally showing off. So that rules out Burglar Bill. It can only be one thing: possums.

Traditionally, homes down this part of the world have corrugated tin roofs. Which sounds a bit ramshackled, but they really work. Australians and Kiwis often reminisce about the soothing sound of rain on a tin roof. They neglect to mention the scourge of tin roofed attics and soundly sleeping home owners as possums clatter home after a hard night out; peeling back the roof panels and having a huge domestic in the loft before settling down to sleep, leaving the legitimate residents wide awake, wondering how to evict those upstairs.

And that's the tricky part - getting rid of them. Because Dame Edna's favourite marsupials are pretty cute looking and protected. Hence the proliferation in the Yellow Pages of small businesses named Possum Pete and suchlike, who can dispatch them humanely. They will hang around for the family unit upstairs to saunter out for the night - and it can be a long line of mums, dads, aunties and kids - and quickly block up the entry before they get back and find they're locked out. And then all hell really does break out.

Kiwis don't have this problem as possums are not a protected species in New Zealand. In fact they are an introduced, non native species who chew up tons of vegetation each night and who the NZ government actively try to eliminate. Their souvenir shops are full of socks, hats and handbags, all made out of possum.

We however found an alternative solution: As our own particular roof monster was making it's routine, early evening trip up one of the palm trees outside, we shone Dave's ten squibillion mega watt dive torch at it. It looked at us somewhat blindly with surprise, and we've never had a sleepless night since.