Brave Alaskan woman calmly picks up opossum that terrorized a Brooklyn bar and carries it to the sidewalk
A woman from Alaska is being hailed a hero in Brooklyn after calmly removing an opossum that ran amok in a bar.
The unusual event unfolded last week at Temkin’s Bar in Greenpoint, where video shows a crowd of horrified patrons looking on as Anchorage native Sarah Fulton picks up the possum.
Fulton told WNBC-TV that she and a friend were hanging out on the sidewalk outside the bar when they saw a creature dart inside through the open door.
‘We just were like, ‘Was that a dog? Is that a rat?” recalled Fulton. ‘We both looked at each other and were like, ‘That was too big to be a rat! It has to be an opossum.
Inside the bar, pandemonium erupted as patrons jumped up from their tables screaming to escape the unexpected vermin.
‘I mean everybody just lost their minds, we couldn’t believe it was happening,’ bartender Rachel Bessemer told the NBC affiliate.
‘I grabbed my phone, didn’t know who to call, I was like, ‘this is not what people do.”
Fulton, who grew up in the Alaskan wilds but now lives in New York, took control of the situation, declaring ‘hold my phone, I’m from Alaska’ — a spur of the moment catchphrase that she is now selling on T-shirts.
‘I’m from Alaska and I used to go camping with black bears hanging out at my campsite,’ she said.
‘I think it was just instinctual, I just like went up to him and I was like, ‘hey I know you’re afraid’ … and I was like ‘alright, I think I’m just gonna scruff you and take you out because that would be the least painful for you.”
Video shows Fulton picking up the creature by the scruff of its neck and lifting it in front of her as it hisses and claws at the air.
As the other bar patrons look on, shrieking in amazement, she then marches out to the sidewalk carrying the possum and releases it safely.
‘They’re like ‘you’re a hero, you’re a celebrity.’ I’m like, what? No,’ Fulton recalled.
‘For me, it’s just a wild animal. But I have to realize I’m not in Alaska, and that’s not something you see everyday.’
Bessemer, the bartender, said that as grateful bargoers bought Fulton round after round to celebrate her, the whole affair ‘turned into a party’.