LYNN ADAMS

SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER

If you’re out much after dark, you may encounter a grinning white and gray marsupial indigenous to Oklahoma. If you happened to live in Australia or China or any of the island nations in between, the nocturnal critters are a somewhat cuter variety.

While the former is officially an opossum, the latter is also a marsupial called a possum, which is more closely related to kangaroos.

Of course, in North America, people often shorten opossum to possum when talking about the creatures prowling around the backyard at night.

It makes little difference to Aniston Moore, a sixth grader at Muldrow Middle School. It was “possum” that was her downfall at the Eastern Oklahoma State Spelling Bee on April 26 in Muskogee, where she finished third.

And that was after she correctly spelled “zephyr” and “bureaucracy,” which she says was her hardest word to spell.

On Monday at the school’s end-of-year awards assembly, Moore accepted an oversized $250 check on the school’s behalf from Susan Hoog, director of the Eastern Oklahoma State Spelling Bee, who was accompanied by committee member Kay Turner.

Moore also received a personal check for $100 from Hoog, and that was after receiving $200 from Charlie’s Chicken on the day of the Spelling Bee.

“I’m pretty good at it,” Moore says matter-of-factly about her spelling prowess.

Middle school librarian Leslie Broyles says she’s “a natural.”

Moore has been competing at Spelling Bees the past two years, having finished third as a fifth-grader, but failing to qualify for the Eastern Oklahoma State competition.

The road to Muskogee started with 10,000 spellers from 35 counties, Hoog told the awards assembly audience. That large pool of competitors was narrowed to about 200 for the finals.

Moore admits that she’s a procrastinator, which was true when she was preparing for the competition. But she says spelling the words that led to her final finish was “a stroke of luck by the grace of the Lord.”

She says she’s already got her sights set on next year’s Spelling Bee. “I’m in it to win it,” she says.

Aniston is the daughter of Kris and Ashton Moore, and sister to Ainsley.

On Monday, she was also among her agegroup peers who were in the running to win a flat-screen TV. Ironically, she finished third there, too.