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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Possum Monument

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.61.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Wausau, Florida’s monument and annual festival celebrate this furry critter’s contributions to the community. READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/possum-monument

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

So I have a compost pile in the back, back corner of my yard, and sometimes I forget

0:07.0

to take out the little compost bin that we keep on the kitchen shelf, and it gets too

0:11.9

full, and then you've got to take it out and become an emergency.

0:15.0

And one night, I went out with my overflowing compost bin in a flashlight, because it was

0:20.0

late.

0:21.0

And as I got close to the compost pile, I suddenly saw the reflection of these two little

0:27.2

eyes on top of the pile.

0:30.4

Because they are sitting on top of it, hissing at me aggressively, was this sharp toothed,

0:39.4

fat, tailed, bristly haired, like giant rat creature.

0:44.7

And in that moment, I thought this has got to be the most hideous and sort of simultaneously

0:54.2

adorable creature I have ever seen in my life, and then it's gampered away.

1:02.3

That creature was a possum, and to be honest, finding a lurking on a pile of old rotting

1:07.7

food scraps made a lot of sense.

1:10.1

It felt like a natural place for a possum to be.

1:15.7

But there's this old photo archived in the Library of Congress that tells a very different

1:21.6

story about this animal.

1:24.3

From 1909, it's in black and white, and it is taken in a banquet hall.

1:29.1

And inside this banquet hall are rows and rows of these important looking dudes with

1:34.5

slick back hair, they're in their tuxedos and bow ties, and they're all sitting at these

1:39.3

long dinner tables.

1:41.3

They're here for a very, very fancy meal, a fancy meal featuring not roast beef or prime

1:48.9

rib, but possum, possum and taters, to be exact.

...

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