speaking of ACLU:
A New Year's Tradition Lives, but the 4-Legged Star Doesn't
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: January 2, 2004
RASSTOWN, N.C., Jan. 1 — For the last 12 years, on New Year's Eve, this Appalachian town has lowered a possum in a Plexiglas cage from the roof of a gas station at the stroke of midnight. It is called the Possum Drop, and hundreds of people pack downtown Brasstown to see it.
This time, Baby New Year was awfully still.
And as the crowd soon learned, this possum wasn't just playing possum. It was roadkill.
With just hours to go before the festivities, Clay Logan, host of the Possum Drop, said he got a call from a national animal rights organization threatening to sue him for animal cruelty if he used a live possum.
"So I found me a dead one," Mr. Logan said.
As fireworks popped and lovers kissed, the dead possum swung from a Citgo sign. And as the festivities ended, many revelers trudged away, saying their small town fun had been spoiled by big city ways.
"Hell of a way to start the New Year, saluting a dead possum," said Steve Barringer, a blacksmith.
Over the years, Mr. Logan, owner of Brasstown's only gas station, has promoted his town of 240 people as the Possum Capital of the World, selling kitschy possum gifts and organizing the Possum Drop.
Since 1991, Mr. Logan has used live possums, trapped by hunters, fattened on cat food and turned loose after they are lowered slowly by a rope from the roof of his gas station.
But on Wednesday, the day The New York Times published an article on the Possum Drop, Mr. Logan got a call from a man who said he represented People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, headquartered in Norfolk, Va. Debbie Leahy, director of PETA's captive animals and entertainment issues, said she did not know which member made the call but she said the event was "perverse, reckless and terrifying to the possum."
"There's a number of legal actions we could pursue against that guy," Ms. Leahy said.
Mr. Logan, 57, said he thought about using a live possum anyway.
"But I can't fight these people," he said. "Not with lawyers and all."
So, with the crowd building, Mr. Logan released the live possum from its cage and put the word out: find me another possum, a dead one.
His buddies took to the highways, wending their way through forests of rhododendron and pine, scouring the shoulders for that unlucky animal, hopefully one without tire tracks.
The drop had had setbacks before. Snow, rain, lighting problems. But there had always been a possum.
Finally, Mr. Logan's friends found a downed possum in pretty good shape and quickly hoisted it up to the roof of the Citgo station. Most people thought it was alive, even after Mr. Logan announced it was roadkill.
Mr. Logan is known to be a joker, especially when it comes to making fun of redneck culture, "which I'm entitled to do," he explained, "because I'm a redneck."
As it says on his Web site, www.clayscorner.com, "One man's roadkill is another man's icon."
"But, " Mr. Logan said Thursday with a swallow, "I never thought it would come down to this." |
