I'm sure you all want to know how possum is getting on. Well, he's doing fine. My only worry is that with all that good food I serve him, he may one night no longer be able to get out of his box.
I serve him a regular menu of bananas, peaches, figs, pears, apples, and carrots. The one item not yet on his menu is smashed avocado on toast - but who knows?
By the way, the avocado's proper name is 'ahuacate' which has been a staple food in Mexico, and Central and South America since 500 B.C. It had never been grown commercially until the early 1900s when hotels in Los Angeles and San Francisco were ordering as many of the fruits as they could and paying as much as $12 for a dozen.
But farmers faced a marketing problem. First, ahuacate was too hard for Americans to pronounce. Worse, it was the Aztec word for testicle, named for its shape and reputation as an aphrodisiac. Then there was the other unappealing name: "alligator pear". So they came up with a new name: avocado. They informed dictionary publishers of the change — and that the plural was spelled "avocados", not "avocadoes".
I just thought you'd like to know. Now you do.
