An area in Florida - Let's Cheer the Lowly Possum
An area in Florida - Let's Cheer the Lowly Possum
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There is a location in Florida that created a twelve-foot-superior monument in the course of town to exalt the lowly possum. Now, why would anybody want to perform that?
Very well, to begin with, heroes are difficult to receive on this invest Florida - the Panhandle city of Wausau, residence of under 500 folks through Washington County about 10 miles south of Chipley.
Why not the possum, an unlikely hero to put it mildly? Nobody else places the possum more than a pedestal. Why not Wausau?
Next, back 1982, Wausau got Unwell and Bored with getting left out from your Florida lists of pleasurable, fairs and festivals. Every spot in Florida needs a festival. And not one particular commit Florida features a Possum Competition. Why don't you Wausau?
If you've by no means attended Washington County, you most likely will Imagine I'm developing this up. Should you have visited Washington County, you can fully grasp - and know it is a real Tale.
Wausau, it wound up, had some pretty powerful possum politicians from the early '80s. Here's some things they completed:
They persuaded the Florida Legislature to proclaim the extremely to start with Saturday in August as Possum Working day in Florida. That led for the constructing with the monument together State Freeway 77 in Wausau.
They even bought America Congress to market the possum. Congress joined the enjoyable by offering the cash for Wausau's Possum Palace so Wausau may have a location to keep its yearly Pleasurable Day and Possum Competition. That includes a queen contest and possum auction, amid other items, the Pageant draws in Lots of individuals annually, and in order that they like it.
Day out For numerous educating of Northerners here. The South's possum is definitely the identical lowly animal you contact opossum, (Why use seven letters check here when 6 will do?) It is a smallish marsupial that lives in trees and exhibits its unattractive entire body only in the evening. This is exactly why, if you find yourself In the appropriate place set up Florida, you may hear possum hunters' puppies baying and barking. Treed by dogs, the possum 'freezes', so it's straightforward adequate to trap (or shoot) just one.
An inscription within the monument in the center of Wausau cites the possum's job in supplying 'the two fur and food items' with the complete hundreds of years. It goes to say: 'Their existence listed here has furnished a resource of nutritious and flavorful food stuff in ordinary periods and it's got been An important support to human survival during periods of distress and critical need to have.'
Laugh if you like. The folks of Wausau will chortle together with you - whilst downing baked possum and sweet potatoes.