Since ducks lack the opposable thumbs to turn newspaper pages and University of Oregon students’ heads are too clouded with bong resin to read for any length of time, you’ve probably never seen my column in The Daily Barometer.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Carole. I’m a senior English major at Oregon State (read: real college). In my field of column writing, I am known for luring readers in with my flip, fluffy wit and beauty-queen charm. Then I pounce on them with my flagrant opinions and dominatrix-like language command, and they have no idea what hit them.
You can try to run for cover in your namby-pamby, Disney-fied, glorified green duck blind, but you can’t hide.
Here, ducky, ducky duckies… you’re in my world now.
Being a Beaver is all about something you Ducks know nothing about. It involves words like honor, faith, fanaticism and fervor. We’ve sat diligently through the lean years and the leaner years, argued in the face of opponents who would accuse us of being less than a football team, even when our only response could be that we believe in something that no one else can see. We play by teamwork. We play for the love of the game. We play for our hometown. We play to show our belief in the near-religious culture of football.
We wear orange, for God’s sake.
It takes a true fan to sit on a cold metal bench in the driving rain, wearing an orange poncho to support a team that, up until a year and a half ago, hadn’t had a winning season since Nixon claimed he was not a crook.
We know what it means to be a fan, and that’s something you Ducks can never understand, nor ever take away from us. What is a duck anyway? The bottom of the aquatic food chain, these anal-retentive fowl have only webbed feet and drab plumage to offer as noteworthy. These ugly water scum have nothing productive to contribute to the animal kingdom except a yearly crop of about a dozen ugly ducklings, half of which will meet their Waterloo crossing the street.
Duck hunters can bag a whole flock in an afternoon because these funny-feathered mammals are stupid enough to fly toward canned duck calls. “Gee,” their little bird brains are thinking, “it doesn’t really sound like Aunt Eleanor, but it must be her. What if she’s fallen and she can’t get up? I better go check it out.” Duck-asses. And the advertising team at the University of Oregon thought they were coming up with something really ingenius by marketing those little duck calls you wear around your neck. What for? Do you blow on them so little Joey Harrington will know where to throw?
You would never catch a beaver dead with some tail or something hanging around its neck. Beavers are fine, brave creatures, feared by the legitimate farm community. Their pugnacious, tenacious, voracious spirits drive their magnificent chompers to fell old growth in minutes. They’re well respected in their field of work, a force to be reckoned with. Our title may not be as ferocious sounding as warriors or bears, but I pity the leg that a beaver sinks his bloodthirsty fangs into.
Animal instincts aside, the Beavers are simply a more honorable lot than you all. Sorry! For starters, we recruit in high schools and junior colleges, not prisons.
And Eugene! Please! You people are so adversarial you can’t even put up a Christmas tree without somebody getting their panties in a bunch.
Face it, people. Your water-tight asses are in a proverbial sling when we hit Autzen on Saturday. And until then, duck off.
Carole Chase is a guest humor columnist and forum editor of The Daily Barometer. The opinions in this column do not necessarily represent those of the Barometer or Emerald. Chase can be reached at chaseca@onid. Responses can be send to [email protected].