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 devote Florida that developed a twelve-foot-higher monument in the course of city to exalt the lowly possum. Now, why would any person wish to accomplish that?
Properly, to start out, heroes are tough to analysis using this area in Florida - the Panhandle city of Wausau, property of fewer than 500 folks in the midst of Washington County about ten miles south of Chipley.
Why don't you the possum, an unlikely hero to state the the very least? Nobody else puts the possum over a pedestal. Why not Wausau?
Secondly, back in 1982, Wausau acquired tired of becoming neglected during the Florida lists of fun, fairs and festivals. Each place in place Florida demands a festival. Instead of just one devote Florida contains a Possum Pageant. Why don't you Wausau?
If you haven't gone to Washington County, you most likely will Feel I'm causeing this to get up. In case you have been to Washington County, you will recognize - and know This can be the correct story.
Wausau, it ended up, experienced some pretty impressive possum politicians in the early '80s. Listed below are some things they accomplished:
They persuaded the Florida Legislature to proclaim the quite initial Saturday in August as Possum Working day in Florida. That led for the making on the monument along State Highway 77 in Wausau.
They even received The us Congress to market the possum. Congress joined the exciting by providing the money for Wausau's Possum Palace so Wausau could possibly have a site to help its annual Exciting Day and Possum Festival. That includes a read more queen contest and possum auction, between other things, the Competition draws in tons of people annually, plus they like it.
Day out for a couple educating of Northerners here. The South's possum is similar lowly animal you connect with opossum, (Why use 7 letters when 6 can do?) It's a smallish marsupial that lives in trees and displays its unappealing physique only at nighttime. This is exactly why, when you are in the right devote Florida, you can listen to possum hunters' canines baying and barking. Treed by dogs, the possum 'freezes', so it can be straightforward to hook (or shoot) a single.
An inscription over the monument in the middle of Wausau cites the possum's position in furnishing 'each fur and foodstuff' through the hundreds of years. It goes to say: 'Their existence in this article has delivered a source of nutritious and flavorful foods in usual periods and has been a vital aid to human survival considerably more distress and demanding have to have.'
Chuckle if you like. The people of Wausau will chuckle together with you - although downing baked possum and sweet potatoes.