Stop the NC Possum Drop!

A "Possum Drop" takes place each New Year's Eve in Brasstown, North Carolina. A frightened possum is encased in a clear box, dangled above a crowd of rowdy revelers, and dropped for "entertainment."

Now, the NC legislature has rushed through and passed a bill that makes this animal cruelty legal specifically between the days of Dec. 26 and Jan. 2 in Clay County only.

Animal abusers should not get special legal privileges! Please sign the petition to tell the NC Senate to stop these abuses of power and urge Clay Logan to stop the event!

The "Possum Drop" event is organized by Clay Logan, a convenience store owner -- he should be ashamed but he doesn't care!

Animals are not for our entertainment! Opossums are by nature afraid of humans and noise. Opossums are nocturnal, shy animals that stress just like any animal shut in a box and tormented with fireworks, guns firing, people screaming and lights flashing. All of this signals to the poor animal to fear for its life and run, but it cannot. Clay Logan lines his pockets with this event selling his trinkets every year...this must end!

In an admission that the Opossum Drop always has been illegal, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission ran to the legislature to help it avoid doing the right thing. Enter HB 1131, which legalizes cruelty to North Carolina’s official state marsupial, as long as it takes place in Clay County during the week of New Year’s Eve.

As one reporter notes, "Meanwhile, wildlife rehabilitators who toil night and day to feed, medicate and care for injured, ill or orphaned wild opossums are still subject to the same laws that North Carolina’s lawmakers decided shouldn’t apply when you lock a timid opossum in a box and force him or her to endure a barrage of screaming celebrants, thumping music and deafening fireworks – in other words, all the things that frighten opossums most."

So, the good old boys change laws to get their way! Their message is: Wildlife be damned, humane laws be damned, and ain’t it grand to have friends in the General Assembly? Instead of teaching children that our anti-animal cruelty laws apply equally to everyone, HB 1131 shows them that anything goes if your legislator wants to do someone a favor.

This is an "abuse of power" in the worst way. Sign the petition to tell NC Senate to stop these abuses of power and urge Clay Logan to stop future Possum Drops!