A spot in Florida - Let's Cheer the Lowly Possum
A spot in Florida - Let's Cheer the Lowly Possum
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There's a location in Florida that crafted a 12-foot-superior monument in the midst of town to exalt the lowly possum. Now, why would any one desire to perform that?
Nicely, to get started with, heroes take effort and time to search out in this spend Florida - the Panhandle capital of scotland- Wausau, house of below five hundred folks in the center of Washington County about 10 miles south of Chipley.
Why not the possum, an not likely hero as you'd probably count on? Nobody else puts the possum about the pedestal. Why not Wausau?
Secondly, in 1982, Wausau received fed up with becoming left out While using the Florida lists of enjoyment, fairs and festivals. Each and every place in position Florida desires a festival. And never just one commit Florida carries a Possum Festival. Why don't you Wausau?
If you have not been to Washington County, you probably will think I am earning this up. When you have attended Washington County, you may realize - and know This may be a accurate Tale.
Wausau, it proved, experienced some fairly powerful possum politicians in the course of the early '80s. Allow me to share two issues they accomplished:
They persuaded the Florida Legislature to proclaim the extremely to start with Saturday in August as Possum Day in Florida. That led into the creating in the monument alongside Condition Highway seventy seven in Wausau.
They even bought the United States Congress in promoting the possum. Congress joined the entertaining by furnishing the money for Wausau's Possum Palace so Wausau might have a spot to assistance its annual Fun Working day and Possum Pageant. That includes a queen contest and possum auction, between other things, the festival draws in Countless men and women every year, they usually like it.
Trip for loads of educating of Northerners listed here. The South's possum is identical lowly animal you call opossum, (Why use seven letters when six will execute?) It's a smallish marsupial that life in trees and shows its hideous physique only at nighttime. This is exactly here why, Should you be inside of ideal spend Florida, you could listen to possum hunters' dogs baying and barking. Treed by pet dogs, the possum 'freezes', so it is actually uncomplicated to trap (or shoot) a person.
An inscription to the monument in the middle of Wausau cites the possum's purpose in providing 'both fur and food' through the full hundreds of years. It goes to say: 'Their existence in this article has furnished an origin of nutritious and flavorful food in typical periods and possesses been a vital enable to human survival through times of distress and important have to have.'
Snicker if you want. The people of Wausau will snicker alongside - when downing baked possum and sweet potatoes.