Caitlin Burch lives with her family just north of Columbus, Ohio. She has two daughters, aged 7 and 10, whose tall tales she and her husband Bryan are more than familiar with.
Of course, the daughters ended up telling one tale that was a lot less tall than the parents assumed.
Here's the normal, happy family who would end up going through a not-so-normal situation:
Celebrity Chrissy Teigen ended up prompting the story's reveal with this now-viral tweet lamenting the repeated escapes of her hamster:
In response, Caitlin couldn't help but one-up Chrissy's story with a crazy one of her own: the time a possum lived in her children's room for three days:
Caitlin said her kids came to her and Bryan saying "there was something in their room:"
"They used the words 'creature' and 'rat.' The 7-year-old insisted that there was something. ... The 7-year-old would not sleep in her room. They sleep in their room every night, but I told her she could sleep in the guest room that night if it made her feel better."
The couple checked their kid's room but, finding nothing, thought the "creature" might be a mouse or something small. Caitlin bought mouse traps, set them up just in case, and thought nothing more of it.
After a couple more days, however, the eldest daughter brought her parents into the room once again to see this:
The mischievous forest animal seemed to have set up shop in her children's art supplies.
The creature, an opossum, had been living in the children's room for three days.
"It had crawled into one of the dresses hanging in the closet. It was peeking out of the neck hole."
Needless to say, the children were relieved to know they weren't going crazy:
"It's very much an 'I told you so' moment for them. We realized after the fact that we should have noticed some things. Some toys knocked over. Dog's food missing, so we know it had been in the rest of the house too. The dog never made a peep the whole time it was in the house."
Twitter was terrified at the idea of sleeping in a room with a possum for three days.
For many, the story seemed to raise more questions than it answered.
Ultimately, it could have been a lot worse. At least the possum seemed friendly.
It seems this isn't the first time a possum has caused trouble...
After a couple hours of wrangling, Bryan managed to capture the opossum and transport it back to nature, where it belonged.
The next time Caitlin's kids complain about a monster under their bed, she'll probably be a little more receptive.
Of course, opossums can actually be kind of cute...when they're not lurking in your closet! Maybe Caitlin's would prefer a fuzzy, stuffed version instead.
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