Opossum World

Truly bizarre. Ostensibly a store devoted to selling products made of possum fur, or possum fur blended with merino wool, it had a freak show in the back.

Let’s start with the retail at the front. Lovely but standard resort-town pricey sweaters, gloves, scarves, hats, etc. And not too hidden in a corner, "Norma's Nipple Warmer" and "Opossum Pete's Peter Heater".

“Factory prices” were promised, but it appeared their possum fur miniature kiwis, for instance, were exactly the same price as other souvenir shops I've browsed.

Moving on to the horror show in the back - one big ole justification for killing these cute furry creatures en masse. They were introduced by Aussies (figures) in the late 19th c. and have more or less run roughshod over the country with few non-human predators to keep numbers down. News articles, photos of destruction to foliage, yadda yadda.

Then there was the ‘playful’ side featuring stuffed possums in a singing chorus (see above), being squashed by a car, looking scary and ferocious, and so on and so on. Even a video game of some sort where you could ‘shoot’ at em.

Side note: one of the employees at local hostel claims the whole overpopulation of possums thing in NZ is grossly exaggerated. But who really knows..

The place was creepin’ me out, frankly, so I didn’t snap as many photos as I normally would in such a house of oddities.