A Place in Florida - Let's Cheer the Lowly Possum
A Place in Florida - Let's Cheer the Lowly Possum
Blog Article
There's a spot in Florida that developed a twelve-foot-significant monument in the heart of town to exalt the lowly possum. Now, why would everyone need to do that?
Properly, to get started on, heroes get time and effort to research on this place in place Florida - the Panhandle city of Wausau, home of below five hundred persons in the midst of Washington County about 10 miles south of Chipley.
Why not the possum, an not likely hero to say the minimum? Nobody else puts the possum over a pedestal. Why not Wausau?
Secondly, back again in 1982, Wausau got fed up with staying ignored from the Florida lists of entertaining, fairs and festivals. Every single set in position Florida requires a Pageant. And never a single commit Florida includes a Possum Competition. Why not Wausau?
If you have never long gone to Washington County, you probably will Assume I am building this up. When you've got been to Washington County, you can expect to realize - and know this is the real story.
Wausau, it ended up, had some quite highly effective possum politicians in the early '80s. Here i will discuss some things they achieved:
They persuaded the Florida Legislature to proclaim the Original Saturday in August as Possum Day in Florida. That led on the creating in the monument together State Highway 77 in Wausau.
They even got The us Congress to industry the possum. Congress joined the enjoyable by offering the cash for Wausau's Possum Palace so Wausau could possibly have a place to hold its yearly Entertaining Day and Possum Pageant. Featuring a queen contest and possum auction, amid other factors, the Pageant attracts Many of us yearly, and they also adore it.
Day out for the couple of educating of Northerners listed here. The South's possum could be the equivalent lowly animal you get in touch with 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. This is why, if you are Within the right place set up Florida, you can listen to possum hunters' canines baying and barking. Treed by dogs, the possum 'freezes', so It is easy enough to entice (or shoot) a single.
An inscription throughout the monument in the course of Wausau cites the possum's part in furnishing 'each fur and foodstuff' in the course of the overall hundreds of years. It goes on say: 'Their existence in this article has provided a resource of nutritious and flavorful foods in regular occasions and it has been an essential assist to human survival in situations of distress and significant require.'
Chortle if you want. The men and women of Wausau will snicker with you - when downing baked check here possum and sweet potatoes.