An area in Florida - Let us Cheer the Lowly Possum
An area in Florida - Let us Cheer the Lowly Possum
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There's a place in Florida that built a twelve-foot-significant monument in the middle of city to exalt the lowly possum. Now, why would anybody choose to do that?
Properly, to get started with, heroes are difficult to obtain on this spend Florida - the Panhandle city of Wausau, dwelling of under 500 folks in the heart of Washington County about 10 miles south of Chipley.
Why don't you the possum, an not likely hero understandably? Nobody else puts the possum having a pedestal. Why not Wausau?
Secondly, back 1982, Wausau bought Ill and Weary of staying overlooked with the Florida lists of pleasurable, fairs and festivals. Each individual commit Florida wants a Pageant. And never a person place in position Florida features a Possum Competition. Why not Wausau?
If you've got in no way attended Washington County, you probably will think I am building this up. If you have visited Washington County, you can recognize - and know this can be a correct story.
Wausau, it ended up, experienced some very powerful possum politicians in the early '80s. Listed here are a pair of things they attained:
They persuaded the Florida Legislature to proclaim the extremely initially Saturday in August as Possum Day in Florida. That led towards the making inside the monument along Point out Freeway 77 in Wausau.
They even acquired The us Congress to market the possum. Congress joined the pleasurable by the cash for Wausau's Possum Palace so Wausau may have a place to hold its annual Enjoyable Working day and Possum Competition. That includes a queen contest and possum auction, amongst other things, the festival appeals to lots of folks on a yearly basis, and so they discover it irresistible.
Day out for some educating of Northerners right here. The South's possum is identical lowly animal you phone opossum, (Why use seven letters when 6 will execute?) It's a smallish marsupial that lives in trees and shows its unsightly physique only during the night time. click here That is why, when you are within the appropriate dedicate Florida, you are able to listen to possum hunters' pet dogs baying and barking. Treed by pet dogs, the possum 'freezes', so it is actually effortless to hook (or shoot) a person.
An inscription with the monument in the course of Wausau cites the possum's job in supplying 'the two fur and food items' all through the hundreds of years. It goes on to say: 'Their presence here has offered a resource of nutritious and flavorful foodstuff in regular periods and it has been a significant guide to human survival a lot more distress and critical want.'
Snicker if you'd want. The people of Wausau will giggle together with you - even though downing baked possum and sweet potatoes.