Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Possums for Sale, New York City



Posssums for sale, New York City, 1916. Click to enlarge. A great old picture.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Um, so why were they selling them? Fur? Food? While my ag collegues do feed the groundhogs to their dogs, no one seems to make use of possems, at least here in PA.

Dorene

PBurns said...

Food. The fur is very, very low quality, but possum was once a rural food source in the South among the very poor. Apparently some folks that went to NYC "got a hankering" for "home cooking." A possum is one animal I will not eat. Ever.

P.

Anonymous said...

Wow, some of those look atomic-sized!

Nasty, EPM-carrying bastards, I have zero affection for them. Many years ago at our old farm we were awakened in the middle of the night by the most blood-curdling SCREAMS you could possibly imagine. Searching for the source, and shaking in our socks, we trained our Mag-Light up into the branches of an ancient Beech tree outside our bedroom window. A demonic-looking possum (aren't they all?) had in its claws a black crow, which it was deavoring alive, chest first. The crow was screaming its way to a nasty death. Close to 30 years later it's remains vivid and horrible in my head.

Do you want to hunt them or the remaining groundhogs on my farm? Maybe you didn't get my email invitation, but it stands. The damned groundhogs are still resisting capture....

KJ

Anonymous said...

Never say never, Patrick! With the economy going the way it is, you might be happy to have a nice 'possum-and-sweet-taters meal someday! Some of my relatives during the Depression sure were! But after you catch your 'possum, be sure and keep it up in a hutch for a coupla-weeks and feed it on vegetable scraps to "clean-it-out", and cook it looong and thouroughly--MMMMMM-GOOD!...L.B.