Before entering the realm of food preparation, I’d like to make absolutely clear how much I love possums. They live the way I feel most of the time—a nomadic living fossil, a loner unable to tolerate company except during mating season. Fortunately for them that occurs every six months. Possum, opossum, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways!
You have opposable thumbs!
You are the only marsupial in the entire Western hemisphere!
You will eat darn near anything!
You have a prehensile tail!
You act in movies when the script calls for a rat!
You have over fifty teeth!
You are immune to rattlesnake venom and rabies!
Possums are the oldest surviving mammals in North America, having successfully defended themselves in the most absurd way possible. When scared, they bare their teeth in a hiss, self-induce a temporary comatose state, and emit a stench that smells like rotting meat. This response to attack has kept the species alive and unchanged for 75 million years.
The following recipe for Baked Possum is from More Than Moonshine, by Sidney Saylor Farr, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1983. The book is divided into nineteen sections with an extensive index. When her mother fell ill, Miss Sidney dropped out of school in seventh grade to take care of her nine younger siblings. She married at age fifteen and attained her high school degree through correspondence courses. She eventually wrote several books, worked as a librarian at Berea College, and edited Appalachian Heritage for fourteen years.
The primary ingredient for this recipe is of course American Opossum, which most folks know as roadkill. Possums are not available in stores or at organic farms. You can harvest a possum with a dog and a shotgun, but you run into the problem of breaking your tooth on a pellet lodged in the meat. Possums are inherently “free-range,” which means they are the ultimate scavengers, willing to eat all manner of garbage. Ideally you will trap a possum and keep it alive for a week, feeding it a steady diet of roughage to clean out its system. They’re not easy to trap. They like trees, and have the habit of changing dens every few days to foil predators. Experienced possum seekers carry a small mirror to hold beneath the animal’s nose to check for life. If the glass fogs, your possum is playing possum.
Before we begin preparing the possum for baking, I’d like to relate two highly personal stories about possums. One is quite sentimental and the second has a squeamish element, so I will lead with the sweet and kind.
by Chris Offutt, Oxford American | Read more:
Image: “Possum” (2009) by Allison Schulnik.
You have opposable thumbs!You are the only marsupial in the entire Western hemisphere!
You will eat darn near anything!
You have a prehensile tail!
You act in movies when the script calls for a rat!
You have over fifty teeth!
You are immune to rattlesnake venom and rabies!
Possums are the oldest surviving mammals in North America, having successfully defended themselves in the most absurd way possible. When scared, they bare their teeth in a hiss, self-induce a temporary comatose state, and emit a stench that smells like rotting meat. This response to attack has kept the species alive and unchanged for 75 million years.
The following recipe for Baked Possum is from More Than Moonshine, by Sidney Saylor Farr, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1983. The book is divided into nineteen sections with an extensive index. When her mother fell ill, Miss Sidney dropped out of school in seventh grade to take care of her nine younger siblings. She married at age fifteen and attained her high school degree through correspondence courses. She eventually wrote several books, worked as a librarian at Berea College, and edited Appalachian Heritage for fourteen years.
The primary ingredient for this recipe is of course American Opossum, which most folks know as roadkill. Possums are not available in stores or at organic farms. You can harvest a possum with a dog and a shotgun, but you run into the problem of breaking your tooth on a pellet lodged in the meat. Possums are inherently “free-range,” which means they are the ultimate scavengers, willing to eat all manner of garbage. Ideally you will trap a possum and keep it alive for a week, feeding it a steady diet of roughage to clean out its system. They’re not easy to trap. They like trees, and have the habit of changing dens every few days to foil predators. Experienced possum seekers carry a small mirror to hold beneath the animal’s nose to check for life. If the glass fogs, your possum is playing possum.
Before we begin preparing the possum for baking, I’d like to relate two highly personal stories about possums. One is quite sentimental and the second has a squeamish element, so I will lead with the sweet and kind.
by Chris Offutt, Oxford American | Read more:
Image: “Possum” (2009) by Allison Schulnik.
