There’s a small grocery store about two blocks from my home, and after closing, sometime the employees hang out at the back of the parking lot. Adjacent is a 7-Eleven and that’s where I was one night a couple of weeks ago around 10 p.m.

    Sleven was hopping. Somehow it always surprises me how many people just hang out there.

    As I left the store, I saw a large rodentlike creature walking across the grocery parking lot. Might have been a rat; could have been a possum. It skittered a little funny. Knowing the local fauna, it might even have been a muskrat, but it was too dark to tell.

    Suddenly an engine revved. The grocery stockers had noticed the animal, too, and wanted a closer look. It wanted no part of this and headed for the trash containers.

    The guys pulled close and peered behind the containers. “Dude, I think it’s a platypus or something,” one said.

    Um, no. Wrong hemisphere. Dude.