National Animal
Opossum
There is a motion before Parliament to officially declare the North American opossum to be Shalampax’s national animal.
There are currently no opossums (also known as possums)—North American or otherwise—living in Shalampax. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, there never have been any opossums in Shalampax other than possibly as carcasses that were used in the Road Kill Surprise served at Rottentomato’s restaurant. Rottentomato adamantly refuses to divulge the ingredients of these special dishes, so it is possible there has been opossum meat used in them at one time or another.
Despite the opossum never having been native to Shalampax, and possibly never having even visited here, Members of Parliament are considering honoring it as our national animal because it sleeps about 18 hours a day and it is generally slow-moving. The opossum is therefore considered to be an excellent symbol of and a role model for Shalampaxians.
Members of Parliament are very eager to hear the public’s thoughts on this motion. Parliament will invite public discussion as soon as its members wake from their naps, which will likely be tomorrow or the next day.
I’m quite surprised that the opossum was chosen in lieu of the very honorable ground sloth. The very name of that animal speaks to the Shalampaxian way of life.
I suppose if the choice of a national animal was limited species actually living on Shalampax, it would be the cockroach, although I guess technically that would be the national insect.
David, I agree with you on the sloth, but not the cockroach, which seems far too industrious and resilient to be the Shalampax national symbol. Besides, possums are cute and can we truly say that anything Shalampaxian deserves to be labeled “cute”?
@Patricia
I agree that the cockroach is industrious but it is the only non-humanoid creature that I know of that is indigenous to Shalampax. Besides, I don’t think they are equating this to a national ’symbol’…I could be wrong.
And please to keep in mind that the owners of the cult and spam businesses seem to be quite industrious and, based on the numbers of international arrest warrants lodged against them, have proven rather resilient as well.
@David & @Patricia: If I know our parliamentarians, and I do, I seriously doubt they put much thought into this. And they certainly didn’t spend any time researching it–that would be too far out of character. I suspect what happened was that some Member of Parliament heard the expression “playing possum” and said, “Hey …”
As to the cockroach, David is right. Apart from humans, insects are the only animal species living in Shalampax. So, if we wanted to be so foolish as to restrict ourselves to resident animal species, it would probably have to be the cockroach or possibly the maggot. However, we find cockroaches and maggots to be disgusting creatures; delicious, but disgusting. Delicious is not a sufficient characteristic to get it named as our national animal.