There's a dedicate Florida that designed a twelve-foot-high monument in the course of town to exalt the lowly possum. Now, why would everyone could possibly love to do that?
Well, to start with, heroes consider time and effort to research With this place set up Florida - the Panhandle city of Wausau, household of underneath 500 persons in the course of Washington County about 10 miles south of Chipley.
Why not the possum, an unlikely hero to state the minimum? No one else puts the possum on the pedestal. Why not Wausau?
Secondly, last 1982, Wausau got Unwell and worn out with remaining left out With all the Florida lists of pleasurable, fairs and festivals. Each and every dedicate Florida wishes a Pageant. Instead of a single invest Florida incorporates a Possum Festival. Why don't you Wausau?
If you have not visited Washington County, you probably will think I am making this up. When you have absent to Washington County, you may recognize - and know It is just a accurate Tale.
Wausau, it proved, had some rather potent possum politicians in early '80s. Allow me to share certain things they completed:
They persuaded the Florida Legislature to proclaim the pretty very first Saturday in August as Possum Working day in Florida. That led for the making within the monument along Point out Freeway seventy seven in Wausau.
They even got America Congress to promote the possum. Congress joined the entertaining as a result of supplying the funds for Wausau's Possum Palace so Wausau would have a place to help keep its annual Fun Working day and Possum Pageant. Featuring a queen contest and possum auction, among other things, the Competition draws in here tons of people every year, and Additionally they love it.
Day out for many educating of Northerners below. The South's possum is identical lowly animal you simply call opossum, (Why use 7 letters when 6 will do?) It's a smallish marsupial that lives in trees and demonstrates its ugly human body only during the night time. That's why, if you are Within the appropriate commit Florida, it is possible to hear possum hunters' canine baying and barking. Treed by pet dogs, the possum 'freezes', hence it can be not hard to hook (or shoot) one.
An inscription for the monument in the course of Wausau cites the possum's position in supplying 'both of those fur and foods' throughout the hundreds of years. It goes on say: 'Their existence below has offered a source of nutritious and flavorful meals in normal situations and has been a big aid to human survival through instances of distress and critical have to have.'
Chuckle if you want. The people today of Wausau will laugh along with you - whilst downing baked possum and sweet potatoes.