How about the Lone Pines?" I asked my roommate.
"Oh, that would be good. At football games we could do this," she proceeded to raise her arms above her head, clasp her hands and sway silently.
"Okay, fine. What else do we associate with Dartmouth? Dogs? We could be mongrels!"
My roommate tuned me out. Earlier on the list had been the Grinches, Cats-in-the-Hat and moose.
"Moose aren't even dangerous!" she had protested.
"They are during mating season," I replied. "But what would that say about Dartmouth?"
Such goes the search for a mascot. The truth is, we need one. After almost 20 years, we still haven't quite accepted the "Big Green" without a noun to attach to it. How can we replace the "Indian" -- with all its assumed colors and rituals -- with nothing?
Our mascot doesn't have to be perfect -- after all, Ohio State has the Buckeye, which turns out to be a small brown nut, and Oregon has the Ducks.
We could follow Alabama's lead and pick something to match our uniforms like their "Crimson Tide." So here we go again: something green. Unfortunately, aside from broccoli, one of the aforementioned Dr. Seuss characters, grass (now that would be an ... uhh ... controversial mascot, wouldn't it?) and the too-silent lone pine, Green doesn't offer much in the mascot department.
Our laid-to-rest mascot wasn't green at all, though. In fact, local wildlife inspired such mascots as University of California at Santa Cruz's Banana Slug, Colorado's Buffalo and -- I assume -- Arkansas' Razorbacks (Pigs). I try thinking of things we have in our granite-and-pine forests: squirrels, deer, wolves? I am partial to wolves, actually, since that was my high school mascot. But do we have any? Squirrels are slightly less than ferocious. How about mountain lions? Abominable snowpeoples?
We could just go for something -- anything -- fierce. Bigfoot is thought to reside in Montana, so I guess we lose out on that formidable creature. Other scary things: sharks, Godzilla, vampires, bears, bridges with train tracks and a train coming. Wait a second! Dinosaurs are green-- in coloring books anyway. So are frogs (although I sense resistence to Kermit already). Which dinosaurs? Would we have to pick a species -- The Dartmouth "Raptors", or The Big Green "Pterodactyls"....?
On the other hand, how bloodthirsty do we have to be? Honestly the most formidable things I have encountered around Dartmouth are patches of ice in the winter. How about it: we can be the Dartmouth Ice. We can just shout, "Ice! Ice! Ice!" at sports games ... or not.
We could be blizzards or thunderstorms (Iowa State is the Cyclones). Then we could play that camp game in which we all rub our hands together lightly to make a noise like rain, then start snapping, then pound our thighs with our palms to gradually build up to the sound of loud, stormy weather.
Although, that might demand too much concentration from spectators of a sports game.
There is another strange phenomenon among sports teams. Names like the Cornhuskers (Nebraska) and the Green Bay Packers(Wisconsin) seem to reflect the dominant trade in the area. Of course, the "Beer Swillers" sounds pretty foolish and the "Academics" a little forced. But maybe we could be "Mountaineers." That certainly hearkens to a tradition worth keeping.
In any case, no one can say there isn't a suitable mascot out there.
Personally, I'm still fond of the moose -- that way we would have free advertising all over New Hampshire from those yellow "Brake for Moose: It Could Save Your Life." bumper stickers. I bet we could even get some of those made up in green.
