Sunday, October 3, 2010

Scary Beavers and Ducks

What a fantastic day for football in Oregon. Both the Oregon Ducks and the Beavers won their games today. I got to enjoy the Beavers game in person.

I think it is amazing, however, that the two most famous colleges in this state could not come up with more fierce sounding mascots than Ducks and Beavers.

The Oregon State Beavers at least try to make their mascot seem ferocious. On the giant screen on the scoreboards, the cartoon Beaver has a chainsaw. When the other team gets a third down, the Beaver fires up the chainsaw and starts cutting down trees one after the other. He gets a determined look in his eyes.

At least the Beaver can get a little respect because, even though he’s a water dwelling varmint who makes his living gnawing on trees, he’s smart enough to use a piece of equipment to shred his opponents – at least psychologically. Whenever the chainsaw starts, the crowd roars and this, in turn, has a negative effect on the opposing team.

But what about the University of Oregon Duck? What’s he going to do to his adversaries? Quack them into begging for mercy? “Oh please Mr. Duck, please don’t quack at us any more.”

Or perhaps the Duck could slap them around with his webfeet. I’m just not seeing it. A duck does not bring fear and trembling into my heart.

That Duck is nothing to mess with, though. When the team scores, he gets down and does pushups for the number of points scored. He had to do 51 pushups today in the game against Stanford. The crowd counts along to keep him honest. That’s got to be one strong Duck, though he doesn’t go all the way down.

Speaking of going down, I’m taking a PE course and they wanted us to do a physical assessment on the first day. I thought I could do about 30 pushups, but I’ve apparently been doing them wrong because I could only do seven the way the PE teacher wanted them done. She made me go all the way down so that my elbows were at a 90-degree angle. Do you know how hard that is? It’s really, really hard, that’s how hard. Try it if you don’t believe me.

But where was I? Oh yeah, at the game today. We sat down in our seats and were smacked with a waft of BO that hit me like the breath from a garbage-eating dragon. It was really acrid. There was a gentleman sitting upwind of us who was as big as two men. My husband said, “I bet that’s where it’s coming from.” Now this might have been a mean thing to say, and perhaps it wasn’t nice to stereotype, but I think that was precisely where the foul odor was coming from.

“Have you got anything aromatic in your backpack?” I asked. My husband dug around but all he could find was a roll of Life Savers. I rubbed a cherry one just under my nose so I could smell cherry instead of armpit. It worked somewhat.

The day was fun, I got to each a ton of potato chips. I love chips. There can be a table full of exotic foods and I’ll just sit beside the potato chips and gorge on them the whole time. I’ll eat the exotic foods, too, but I’ll continue to graze on the chips all day and night. There’s just something about that salty crunch that I cannot get enough of even when my stomach aches from way too many.

Well, I guess that’s enough excitement for you for one day. I wouldn’t want to over-stimulate you with any more of my incredibly interesting goings-on. I’ve covered Beavers and Ducks, pushups and potato chips. I guess I’m going to have to live with the fact that Oregon’s mascots are jungle predators, but are peaceful little creatures minding their own business that represent the rain we’re famous for and the beautiful outdoors. But tell you what, you don’t want to mess with them, because they might be packing chainsaws – and their bite is worse than their quack. GO OREGON!!!

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