The Edible Mascot

Across the nation's schools, primary, secondary and tertiary, cheerleaders are shaking out their pom-poms. Marching bands are gathering in parking lots and marching this way and that. Big Guys are training for another autumn of crashing into one another and falling down, only to stand up, run at each other, and fall down again. Football season is upon us once more and we're dusting off our Zebra Pride (cheer: STRIPE 'EM!) and our Banana Slug Spirit (cheer: EAT THEIR GARDEN TO BITS, BIG YELLOW!). We are digging out our Eagle paraphernalia and our foam Huskie paws, pulling on our Wolverine sweatshirts and our Viking helmets. It is an interesting phenomenon, this show of support and devotion to animals, inanimate objects and extinct cultures, none of which actually play football themselves, yet embody something of our projections of courage, speed, strength, wily cunning or whimsy.

Our good friends at Wikipedia define the origin of a mascot as "any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck, and now includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit or brand name." Furthermore, "Sports teams widely have mascots, especially at university school level in the United States where teams are often identified by their mascot. Team mascots will typically make a regular appearance at games and related events, while logos and merchandise can often bear the mascot's image. In many instances the mascot corresponds with the team name. Mascots are not always animals; characters may be fantasy creatures, people, or inanimate objects.

The word mascot has been traced back to a dialectic use in Provence and Gascony, where it was used to describe anything which brought luck to a household. The word was first popularized in 1880, when French composer Edmond Audran wrote a popular comic operetta titled La Mascotte. However, it had been in use in France long before this, as French slang among gamblers, derived from the Occitan word "masco", meaning "witch" (perhaps from Portuguese mascotto, meaning witchcraft), and also mascoto, meaning spell.

Audran's operetta was so popular that it was translated into English as The Mascot, introducing into the English language a word for any animal, person, or object that brings good luck. Often the choice of mascot reflects a desired quality; a common example of this is the fighting spirit, in which a competitive nature is personified by warriors or predatory animals." Thank you, Wikipedia.

I've been contemplating the symbolic nature of mascots ever since I found myself, many years ago, on the sidelines of a sports field in a short skirt, holding a megaphone in one hand and cheering "G-O-A-T-S, GO GOATS, GO!" (the better to encourage the Battlin' Billies on toward victory). Our collective commitment to an animal that, outside our high school, didn't enjoy much status seemed curious to me, even then. The only mascot even more peculiar to me at the time was our arch-rival, the Antlers (cheer: SHAKE YOUR ANTLERS IN A THREATENING DISPLAY OF DOMINANCE!"). That poor school didn't even have an animal - just an animal part. They could have called themselves the Mandibles, the Compound Eyes, the Thoraxes or the Trunks, for all of the fearsome effect a set of antlers raises.

Still, a team needs to identify with something tangible or the stands will be filled with fans screaming: "COME ON, COME ON, YOU GUYS DOWN THERE THAT WE HOPE WILL WIN BECAUSE WE'RE ALL FROM THE SAME SCHOOL OR GEOGRAPHIC REGION!" It's much, much easier to yell, "GO TOADS!"

An exhaustive search (hours and hours and hours) coughed up some truly imaginative school mascots that sort of fly in the face of Wikipedia's definition of a mascot as personifying warriors or predatory animals. While, perhaps, not embodying a symbol of danger, I could at least make an argument for the goat as having admirable species characteristics. Billy goats possess a wicked set of horns that could make another animal a bit wary. While goats are not usually killers, at least they're stubborn. They'll eat anything, whether it qualifies as food or not (I once lost a telephoto lens to our mascot while standing on the sidelines). They're curious and have a sort of rough disgruntled charm. They like to climb on top of things.

And although a billy may not have quite the sort of destructive association on the playing field that is embodied in a grizzly or a tornado, it has the potential to frighten the be-jezzus out of mascots like The Horned Frog (Texas Christian University), the Fighting Artichokes (Scottsdale Community College), The Fighting Okra and The Fighting Pickle (Delta State U. and North Carolina School of the Arts, respectively). (Couldn't Delta think of anything more fearsome than a small cucumber that's been sitting in brine for a few months? I can only assume that these schools looked over the mascot landscape of carnivores and bad weather and opted for a more vegetarian, peaceful vibe.)

Before I tackled this particular topic (whatever it is), I thought my own high school mascot was relatively singular. Not only were the Battlin' Billies celebrating the sort of animal that does not, even on a good day, inspire trembling in the heart of an even weaker team mascot like the Unicorns (cheer: POKE EM' WITH YOUR MAGICAL HORN!), I erroneously believed that very few sports booster clubs are capable of actually eating their team's iconic representative. Even before I had a clue about cultural anthropology and sympathetic magic, I wondered about the unconscious symbolism associated with roasting your mascot. Very primitive and shamanistic stuff.

After all, it's difficult, impossible, repulsive or illegal to eat a sports mascot in the form of a cardinal, a Viking, a Chief, a bobcat, an eagle, a pirate, a Roughrider, a yellow jacket, an owl or anything else that doesn't fall into the category of domestic livestock. Some animal mascots are edible, but are consumed in really limited quantities (like a Razorback or a Javelina); or are arguably edible but disgusting (like a Banana Slug); or are just too cute to eat (like a kangaroo or a dolphin). But, I didn't take into account the Fightin' Okra, Pickles or Artichokes. It hadn't occurred to me that fans could show solidarity with their team by dipping a steamed leaf into a tiny cup of Hollandaise at Regional Finals (cheer: RIP THEIR HEARTS OUT, ARTICHOKES!) or bring along a giant crispy dill wrapped in wax paper (cheer: SPEAR EM' TO HELL, BIG GREEN!). But, unimpeded by this new information, I will continue my rambling narrative, making no discernable point at the end, I'm pretty sure.

Unlike most high schools in America, we Battlin' Billies could (and did) eat our school mascot - or, more accurately, we ate the immediate relatives of our school mascot. When I was an adolescent lass and still suffused with school spirit, September meant the Battlin' Billies Boosters' Barbeque and my annual serving of greasy pit-roasted goat with sides of slaw, potato salad, pinto beans and a gallon of sweetened iced tea. (Mmmm"hot goat.)

From mythology and aboriginal narratives, we know that warriors consumed parts of a totemic animal to acquire its inherent strengths (see "Cave of the Bear Clan", or "Clan of the Cave Bear" or "Bear of the Cave Clan" - whatever that book is called). I'm fairly certain that we, the Pep Squad, were spooning up platefuls of goat not because goats are strong, brave and swift (which they are, kind of), but because they were cheap, plentiful and tasted good on white bread with jalape�os. Plus, the Boosters loved to barbeque anything that stood still too long (and some things that didn't). It was their religious calling.*

In the interest of full disclosure, generations of our mascots were not moving from the fifty-yard line directly to our Chinette plates. Our male mascots were obtained from herds of attractive Angora goats with impressive sets of curly horns. During games, the goat would wear a little velvet cape in the school colors with long, hanging gold fringe and would stand through the game at the end of a lead, surreptitiously grazing, held by whomever was willing to stand holding a goat for four hours on a football field. Conversely, the far tastier edible mascot we were sacrificing was, probably, a Spanish goat by pedigree.

Our mascots had a peculiar after life, in any case. The mohair on Angora goats gets ratty as they get older, and their physiques become a bit stringy (whose doesn't?). For this reason, Battlin' Billies were regularly retired after about seven years in favor of more virile specimens. I cannot say whether these senior goats went off to some sort of mascot retirement community to live out their remaining days in fields of wildflowers. Even though I suspect not, let's just say that they, eventually, died of natural causes in their pens, on a palette of fresh alfalfa, with loving caretakers standing by.

For certain, however, some part of each and every goat stayed on in the hearts and minds of generations of Battlin' Billies supporters. Every mascot head since 1920-something had been stuffed and mounted by the local taxidermists. The identical trophies lined the walls of the main hall across from the principal's office - each Named "Old Pride" with its Roman numeral - i.e. "Old Pride XXI" - on a brass plaque beneath it and the years of the goat's service. This looked a bit creepy at night, (those soulful eyes could really follow you when you were walking down the darkened hall), but what's a goat ghost going to do to you, after all? Nibble your text books or eat your soda can? A goat-haunting can't be too terrifying.

In a further attempt to honor our mascot (besides eating its cousins and stuffing its dead), there was a headstone on the hill above Billie Field. The monument indicated that this was the final resting place of the Battlin' Billies mascots. I cannot verify this as I never witnessed memorial services there. But, I did hear that there was one interment attended exclusively by mourning cheerleaders - and that they cried. Looking back, though, I find it hard to believe that someone brought a backhoe or a shovel to the high school, dug a hole in the limestone-riddled earth and dumped a headless goat carcass into it just for sentimental reasons.

The Good News in all of this is, however, that boosters don't really need to connect with their mascot in any sort of Jungian archetypal sense. Even if you, the sports fan, cannot conceive of a mascot that you can eat, bury, mount, or admire, there are companies that will do this for you. Just beneath the surface of mascot identity lies hard franchise cash. The national need for naming and identifying with our sports teams is so great that, not surprisingly, there is a commercial enterprise built around supplying mascot trademarks and costuming for enthusiastic spectators (although, I don't think that they will send you a live goat if you plan to go down that road - don't worry, though"I can hook you up).

The International Mascot Corporation (a mascot concept and costuming firm) is so sophisticated that if you are a booster of, say, the technicolor St. Regis Mandrill Baboons (cheer: SHOW EM" YOUR BUTT!"), you can get anything you can possibly imagine in the way of exotic spirit gear. (If I had the Mandrill Baboon account at IMC, I would design some booster pants with a bright red seat that, when you slipped them on, would give you the kind of backside that a real Mandrill Baboon would covet; and I would offer bags of fake poo that you could fling at the opposing team during homecoming. But, then, I am a creative genius.)

Anyhow, if you dream up a mascot, be it the Mighty Eukaryotes (cheer: DIVIDE AND MULTIPLY!) or the Fightin' Ferrets (cheer: MAKE EM' SMELL LIKE URINE!), rest assured that you will have plenty of clothing, towels, seat covers, domestic household accessories, jewelry, tote bags, license plate holders, beer insulators and pennants through which to express your fanaticism. Just remember, your mascot lives on in your heart and mind for your whole life, so choose wisely. If you take a fancy to something whimsical like the Smithville Garden Snails (cheer: "GO, GO, BIG SLOW!" Or "PUSH 'EM BACK, PUSH 'EM BACK, ES-CAR-GOT!"), you might find yourself apologizing to future generations.

My Billy Pride (cheer: I'M A BILLY, YOU'RE A BILLY, WE ARE BILLIES ALL"AND IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE US, WE'LL DO OUR BILLY CALL"BAAAH!) is still intact, if less fervent than thirty years ago. I never see a goat of any kind without feeling a certain tug of admiration. I don't know if that would be true if I'd been a Fighting Pickle or Okra. Although, eating either of those mascots would have been a lot easier" if not as filling.

Note-to-Self 2: If you are horrified reading this, you should know that I spent my formative years in Texas. It's not unusual, there, to know people who throw fresh (or not-so-fresh) road kill into the bed of their truck for later consumption. I had a coworker named Eddie who ran over a rattlesnake one morning on his way in to work. He skinned it out in the parking lot, diced it into appetizer-sized bits, lightly battered it and fried it up in the office kitchen. Then, he set it out on the afternoon Christmas pot-luck buffet, complete with frilly toothpicks. We were all more concerned with whether Eddie had washed his hands before cooking the snake than the fact that fried snake was a party-food option.

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Ingrid divides her life between the San Juan Islands (where her heart lives) and Austin, Texas (where her paycheck is generated). While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra ..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Ingrid is an old-school Libra and believes that the Revolution should be a catered event.

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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