FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ottawa,
Canada, May 92. (by Special Correspondent) --- The American Possum, Pogo, was
endorsed for the Presidency of the U.S. by a wildly enthusiastic mob of
prominent Canadian Beavers today in their annual convention at this Canadian
capital. Delegates will be sent to both the Democratic and the Republican
conventions in the States. "Pogo definitely has the Canadian vote in his
pocket!" declared one happy Conventioneer.
"Canada, for some strange reason,"
said this spokesman, "has never nominated or elected a President of the
United States. We feel this, if not sheer discrimination, at least is a bona
fide oversight. We intend to make our weight felt at Chicago and at San
Francisco. If we are not seated, we will high-tail it out of there and start a
rump convention." Shrill whistling and bombastic applause greeted this
remark and the speaker was carried from the hall and presented with a beautiful
new convertible containing seventeen gallons of gas. A short, unpleasant scene
occurred when the bill for gasoline was presented to the recipient. Despite some
ugliness on the part of a splinter party of beavers who claimed that the
automobile was a balsa mock-up, and was sticking in their teeth, the affair
dissolved in good spirits and a fine show of friendliness all around. The
spokesman, still bandaged, spoke cheerfully from his hospital bed today to a
nationwide audience of relatives. "No comment," said the speaker.
Observers here are convinced that Canada favors
the Possum on a tree-to-one basis. "After all,' said one, 'it was in one of
our sister countries that the Australian ballot was first conceived. And what is
Pogo if not a marsupial and what is Australia, if not the home of the marsupial?
The vote will be in the bag.'
A hard-to-hearing gentlemen objected that
Austria was NOT the home of the marsupial. "It is the home of apple
strudel!" he cried. The man was ejected.
Copyright 1956, Walt Kelly
