1. Borrow a tall ladder from the next door neighbor.

2. Climb up to the top of the fiberglass and lattice porch roof on a hot afternoon.

3. Cover your hands and lower arms with a couple of thicknesses of those long plastic sleeves that the newspaper comes in, on rainy mornings. (OK, so those came from the neighbor, also. I cancelled my subscription to the San Antonio Express news a couple of years ago. The neighbor hasn’t, and she has bags of the damned things.)

4. Reach under the eave of the house and gently scoot the remains of an extremely defunct opossum towards the edge of the porch. Said remains are practically liquid

5. Attempt to ignore the truly amazing stench. And the squirming maggots.

6. Scoop it all into a very large black plastic trash bag and remove.

7. Silently curse neighbors who are putting out poison for the rats and opossums.

And by the way, it took several hours and a couple of glasses of chablis to banish the smell. Just thought you would like to know, in case it happens to you