Word: opossum
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...opossum was chosen because it is a unique animal. Born only twelve days after conception, it spends the next 60 to 70 days in its mother's pouch, firmly and continuously attached to her breast. During that period, it grows and behaves much as a human embryo in normal gestation. Marquardt researchers are already well acquainted with the opossum, having learned how to detach the tiny fetus from the mother's breast to feed it artificially. Mixing drugs with the food, the researchers should be able to observe firsthand their effects on a growing fetus...
...Castillo's ensemble in fur-a bulky opossum jacket with a Davey Crockett Hat and an umbrella case in matching fur. We never used to know what to do with an umbrella case once it was peeled from the umbrella. Now we know-it can play 'possum...
Perhaps, Dr. Lowenbach suggested to the Southern Psychiatric Association last week, the trick of "playing dead" may show that the opossum is even more beset than the average psychiatric patient by such traits as "severe anxiety, neurosis, depression, lack of initiative and recession into himself...
Through the years, even the name went through strange evolutions. Simla Vulpina (fox-monkey), after Martyr's description, turned out to be the Boschrot of Dutch explorers, the rat de bois of Louisiana's French trappers, didelphys in the classic zoology of Linnaeus and finally the modern opossum. This is the Indian name as recorded by Captain John Smith at Jamestown. But even Smith was wrong, said the King's surveyor in Carolina. The word was possum, preceded by a grunt, hence the opossum...
...Harvard brawl took place after 1,500 students, gathered in Harvard Square to nominate Pogo, the comic-strip opossum, for President of the U.S., stayed on to battle the unsympathetic Cambridge cops for four hours. Both riots served chiefly to dramatize a newer and more outlandish form of campus disturbance which took form March 20, when a mob of University of Michigan males suddenly headed for the women's dormitories to steal and brandish girls' underwear...