Andrews – After a quarter-century, the North Carolina Possum Drop will be officially retired.
The annual New Year’s Eve celebration, which involved lowering an opossum in a Plexiglas box during the countdown to the new year, was held at Clay’s Corner in Brasstown for 24 years before rights to the event were transferred to the Town of Andrews in 2018.
The event has been repeatedly challenged in court by animal rights advocates in the past. Those arguments reached a boiling point last year, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals asked lawmakers not to continue the tradition, while PETA supporters littered social media with complaints.
Due to the backlash, town officials have decided to transfer the event’s intellectual property rights back to Clay Logan, who plans to retire it once and for all.
“I'm going to retire it in Brasstown,” Logan told the Cherokee Scout, adding that he hasn't thought about having a retirement ceremony for the public to attend. “Twenty-five years is long enough.”
The town spent $7,722 to host the event in Andrews last year and recouped all but $597 of that money via fundraising activities. Mayor James Reid said he plans to sell leftover Possum Drop T-shirts to recover the money.
“We'll sell them at cost, and that will pretty much break us even,” he said.
Since Logan and Reid signed a document transferring rights to the event to the town, they plan to draft a separate document returning the rights to Logan.
Logan founded the event in 1994 to entertain people who couldn’t afford to travel elsewhere to attend new year celebrations. The event was formerly called Clay’s Possum Drop before being renamed the North Carolina Possum Drop during the transfer to Andrews.