A spot in Florida - Let's Cheer the Lowly Possum

There's a put set up Florida that constructed a 12-foot-high monument in the middle of town to exalt the lowly possum. Now, why would any one ought to do that?
Effectively, to start with, heroes are tricky to get on this location in Florida - the Panhandle city of Wausau, household of much less than five hundred folks in the middle of Washington County about ten miles south of Chipley.
Why not the possum, an unlikely hero To place it mildly? No one else puts the possum around the pedestal. Why not Wausau?
Secondly, in 1982, Wausau bought Fed up with currently being omitted While using the Florida lists of pleasurable, fairs and festivals. Just about every spot in Florida requirements a Pageant. Rather than a single invest Florida features a Possum Pageant. Why don't you Wausau?
If you've hardly ever absent to Washington County, you most likely will think I am causeing this being up. Should you have gone to Washington County, you are going to fully grasp - and know this is a correct story.
Wausau, it turned out, experienced some really powerful possum politicians during the early '80s. Allow me to share some things they completed:


They persuaded the Florida Legislature to proclaim the main Saturday in August as Possum Day in Florida. That get more info led to your setting up Using the monument along Point out Highway seventy seven in Wausau.

They even bought the United States Congress to market place the possum. Congress joined the pleasurable by the cash for Wausau's Possum Palace so Wausau might have a spot to help keep its annual Fun Working day and Possum Festival. That includes a queen contest and possum auction, amongst other things, the Pageant attracts A lot of people Just about every and on a yearly basis, plus they like it.
Trip for many educating of Northerners right here. The South's possum is equivalent lowly animal you phone opossum, (Why use seven letters when six can perform?) It is a smallish marsupial that lives in trees and demonstrates its ugly entire body only during the night. That's why, when you are inside proper spend Florida, you are able to hear possum hunters' dogs baying and barking. Treed by pet dogs, the possum 'freezes', so it is actually not tricky to entice (or shoot) a single.
An inscription for that monument all through Wausau cites the possum's purpose in providing 'equally fur and foods' all over the centuries. It goes on to say: 'Their presence here has offered a resource of nutritious and flavorful foodstuff in typical moments and has been an important guide to human survival when in distress and important need.'
Snicker when you'd prefer. The people of Wausau will snicker together - although downing baked possum and sweet potatoes.