post the twentieth, 2013

we passed a possum on the road,
a possum lying like a toad,
lying in the middle, middle,
right there in the middle, middle,
lying in the middle of the road.

possums comprise the largest marsupial group in the western hemisphere. that's not a big surprise, is it now. i would have been hard pressed to name ANY other marsupial group in the western hemisphere, so i'd have given possums the prize there without even having to look it up. the real name of the possum is opossum, which is derived from the algonquin language word "aposoum" meaning "smallish white-furred beastie". this name was assigned by john smith, or a botanist in his party perhaps, in 1610 in the virginia colony. the scientific meaning of possum belongs to marsupials in australia. i could not immediately determine why the australians called this similar thing a possum, which seemed like an awfully big coincidence, which led me to believe it is not.

so, i did a little more research.

captain james cook took the HMS endeavour, a british naval research ship, on an exploratory voyage and landed in australia in april 1770. capt cook's botanist, sir joseph banks, whilst busy classifying all the varied animals of australia, noted that certain ones seemed to be of the aposoum family. see, he'd heard of the other aposoum because he was a man of science and he read the journals.

europeans introduced a specific possum, the common brushtail, to new zealand in order to establish a fur industry. having no natural predators and being quite adaptable, the common brushtail took over new zealand like kudzu through georgia. there are a great deal too many now, and they are pesty, but their pelts are used in clothing - both in combination with wool and alone. no doubt, capt cook's botanist had something to do with this use of possum pelts, and to this day, we have the "joseph a. bank" line of clothiers.

thinking perhaps this james cook was the basis of capt jack aubrey in the "master and commander" series, i looked that up and found listed under "literary allusions": While in conversation with Dillon, Maturin quotes "non amo te, Sabidi" from the 33rd epigram of Martial: "Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere—quare; Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te." SO - as you can SEE - lots and lots of possum talk going on here, and the only logical conclusion is that this capt aubrey is modeled on capt cook. IN ADDITION, a one-fifth scale replica of capt james cook's vessel, the HMS endeavour, is owned by the RUSSELL museum in new zealand. RUSSELL crowe played capt aubrey (clearly based on capt cook) in the film "master and commander".

also, during my research, i uncovered evidence that capt james kirk of star trek fame is based on capt cook. exploring, gathering data, blah blah blah - OF COURSE. this makes perfect sense.

this concludes today's session of possumchat. thanks for tuning in!