Official Mascot Change

 

For 150 years the Democratic and Republican parties have been respectively represented by a donkey and an elephant. Over that century and a half, both parties have evolved and neither party bears any resemblance to their founding ideologies and principles. The first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln and comparing him to Donald Trump is more than a herculean stretch. Lincoln was a Whig-turned-Republican while Trump was a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Authoritarian. Democrats are represented by donkeys because Andrew Jackson was called a “jackass” and, instead of taking offense at the depiction, he adopted it. I think it is time for a mascot change.

My offerings for replacements are the duck-billed platypus and the jackalope. I will present their attributes, fitting for political buffoonery, and leave it up to the reader to figure out which party would be best served by that mascot.

The duck-billed platypus is a semi-aquatic, egg laying mammal. The only mammals who lay eggs are the platypus, spiny anteaters, and politicians. In its aquatic environment where it hunts for food, the platypus is effectively blind and deaf. How many politicians fit that bill? The platypus must use electroreception to find food and navigate. They can see above water, but not very well. This underwater blindness is OK as they feed in the dark in murky water. When lying on the surface, their eyes detect movement and even the smallest bird will send them diving for safety. Do any politicians come to mind?

The platypus has web feet, and those feet are folded under when walking on land to permit knuckle-walking. Their eyes and an interclavicle bone in the shoulder are traits they share with reptiles. Early European naturalists examined preserved samples of this duck-billed, beaver-tailed, egg-laying mammal and thought it to be a fake made of several animals sewn together.

This brings us to the jackalope, a mythical animal of North American folklore. It resembles a jackrabbit with horns, and unlike the platypus, it really IS a fake made of animals sewn together. It seems that one Douglas Herrick and his brother were hunters with taxidermy skills and grafted deer antlers onto a jackrabbit carcass and sold it to a local hotel in Douglas, Wyoming. The name is deceptive because the word “jackalope” is a portmanteau of “jackrabbit” and “antelope.” This is confusing because the horns are from deer and don’t resemble the unbranched structure of antelopes.

To further add to the mystique of the jackalope, is the fact that there really is an antelope jackrabbit that lives in southern Arizona and northwestern Mexico. Like the platypus, the real antelope jackrabbit prefers to forage for food at night. They will eat cacti, grasses, and leafy vegetation but have been observed eating dirt, presumably to take in minerals. I use the antelope jackrabbit as an example because a “real” jackalope can be made from any variety of jackrabbit onto which horns may be attached.

So, there you have it. Two crazy looking animals with unusual habits. An animal that looks like a duck with the body of an otter and the tail of a beaver, and a fictional critter with a deceptive name. Like politicians everywhere, they both spend their productive lives in darkness. Neither one can see very well and both sound like they could be featured in a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. road-trip story. Which animal do you think fits the current personalities of which political party? Are there animals more fitting the crazy mixed up parties of today?

Postscript: I considered the Wolpertinger (look it up) but as it is from Bavaria, I opted for animals from English speaking lands. The Platypus is from Australia.