A Possum Tale

Please take this Geo Coin to the next cache you find. This Possum likes county caches and George Jones music.

Many stories were told.
Many stories were teaching stories.
The old story of possum was told
to keep children from bragging and boasting.
The possum was a beautiful creature,
but he didn't know that.
And one day he was walking out beside the waters
and looked into the very very still waters
and saw a reflection of himself and realized
that his tail was big
and fluffy
and beautiful
and many many colors.

So he began to admire himself,
and he walked by that water all day long
until the wind began to blow.
And then he walked away
and began to boast and brag to the other animals in the forest.
And early every morning
he was out in the center of the forest
and waking all the animals up
to see how beautiful his tail was that day.
Many many days passed,
and they began to get tired of it-- of his boasting and bragging
because they knew he was beautiful.
And the fox and the cricket got so tired of it
that they made a plan to put an end to it.
They had a contest set up
in the squaregrounds of the Cherokee the next day
and invited Mr. Possum to come down and participate,
because it was a contest to see who had the most beautiful tail.
And sure, he would do that,
he knew he would win,
and that would be fine.
But they coaxed him into going with them that night
to comb and brush his tail.
And when he went into the cave of the fox,
they began to brush his tail and groom it,
and he began to get a little sleepy.
And as he began to get sleepy,
they brushed a little faster,
and soon Mr. Possum was fast asleep.
The cricket,
being the creature that he is,
began to chew.
And he chewed
every hair
off the possum's tail.
Well
it was not a very pretty tail at that time,
and they tied it up with a piece of deerskin
and tied a beautiful bow on the end of it.
And early next morning
when the possum awakened, he said,
"What did you do to my tail?"
being very upset.
And they said,
"Oh we combed and brushed it so beautifully.
That we felt like we had to wrap it up
so it would not get messed up."
And so he was in agreement to that,
and he bounced on off to the squaregrounds.
And the animals began to go across the stage.
And you had the skunk
with his beautiful black tail
with a white streak down the middle.
And of course he didn't smell very good,
but all the people were pleased,
at a distance.
And the other animals crossed the stage,
the squirrel,
and the red fox
with his big beautiful orange tail with the black spot on the end.
The possum couldn't wait any longer,
and he began to get antsy.
So he jumped up on the stage and he said,
"It's my time, we need to get this thing settled."
So he said,
"Take the thing off my tail."
And when they take it off,
all the animals,
and all the people in the audience
began to roll and laugh and giggle.
And he looks back at his tail,
and he sees what they're laughing about.
He has the most ugly,
rat-looking tail
that he's ever seen in his life.
And first he begins to snarl and spit
and become very angry.
But after a little while
they laugh again,
and he can't stand it any more,
and he rolls over on his back,
and he plays dead.
The old possum boasted too much.

And if you go out today
and find him in your trash cans,
you will see that he begins to snarl
like he's going to tear you to pieces.
And if you poke him with a little stick,
he 'll remember that he boasted too much.
And he'll roll over onto his back
with all four feet sticking into the air.
And you can pick him up by the tail and carry him back into the forest.
So the teaching of the Cherokee possum story is:

You should let other people tell you that you're beautiful.
Don't go around telling everyone else that you are.

From: Living Stories of the Cherokee, ed. Barbara R. Duncan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pp. 212--215.)