A Place in Florida - Let us Cheer the Lowly Possum
A Place in Florida - Let us Cheer the Lowly Possum
Blog Article
There is a place in position Florida that constructed a twelve-foot-higher monument in the center of town to exalt the lowly possum. Now, why would everyone ought to do that?
Properly, to start, heroes are hard to investigate on this commit Florida - the Panhandle city of Wausau, home of a lot less than five hundred persons in the middle of Washington County about ten miles south of Chipley.
Why don't you the possum, an unlikely hero understandably? Nobody else places the possum over the pedestal. Why don't you Wausau?
Secondly, very last 1982, Wausau obtained fed up with getting disregarded within the Florida lists of fun, fairs and festivals. Each individual dedicate Florida requires a festival. Rather than one commit Florida includes a Possum Competition. Why not Wausau?
If you have never ever visited Washington County, you most likely will Feel I am building this up. If you have frequented Washington County, you'll have an understanding of - and know that is a real story.
Wausau, it turned out, experienced some fairly highly effective possum politicians in early '80s. Listed below are a pair of items they achieved:
They persuaded the Florida Legislature to proclaim the Original Saturday in August as Possum Working day in Florida. That led for the constructing during the monument alongside State Highway seventy seven in Wausau.
They even acquired America Congress in endorsing the possum. Congress joined the pleasurable by the resources for Wausau's Possum Palace so Wausau would have a location to hold its annual Pleasurable Day and Possum Pageant. That includes a queen contest and possum auction, between other matters, the Competition appeals to a lot of folks annually, moreover they like it.
Time out for a lot of educating of Northerners listed here. The South's possum could be the equivalent lowly animal you get in touch with opossum, (Why use seven letters when six will probably do?) It's a smallish marsupial that life in trees and reveals its unpleasant human body only in the evening. This is exactly why, if you're In the ideal put in Florida, you can hear possum hunters' dogs baying and barking. Treed by puppies, the possum 'freezes', so it's not challenging here to entice (or shoot) 1.
An inscription concerning the monument in the course of Wausau cites the possum's role in supplying 'equally fur and foodstuff' in the course of the whole hundreds of years. It goes on to say: 'Their presence here has delivered a useful resource of nutritious and flavorful foodstuff in normal periods and possesses been an essential assistance to human survival in the course of periods of distress and critical require.'
Chuckle if you like. The men and women of Wausau will chortle in addition to you - even though downing baked possum and sweet potatoes.