Beaver Believer

There is an issue that has been gnawing at me for quite sometime now. And gnawing just maybe the operative word in this blog because I have been inspired by one of the greatest gnawers in the universe — the Beaver, or should I say the face of hope for Americans and sports fans in general.
President Obama won the White House suite with his great speeches and ideals for change and those ideals brought hope to the American voters. I am usually against change but I look around at our financial problems and I see that change is a must. In fact, I think America needs a complete facelift that starts with replacing the current National Bird (Bald Eagle) with the Beaver.
I feel like the beaver, which has been endeared as a rodent, has been slighted a great deal over the years.
And I don't understand why the Bald Eagle won the rights to be America's bird in the first place. Did Thomas Jefferson make that call? Did it have something to do with Pearl Harbor? Did it happen after the Black Sox scandal of 1919?
I mean, there is nothing American about the American Bald Eagle, but there are a number of similarities between Americans and the beaver.
For instance, the American people do not have wings attached to our bodies. We can't fly and neither can the beaver. But just like the beaver, people can swim. Americans can swim (Michael Phelps!). After all, we got here by water, not by air.
Americans and beavers hate trees and the flow of water. Both have spent centuries cutting forests down to build dams, to build homes, businesses and sometimes trees were slaughtered for no real reason at all.
Beavers are not bald. Americans do everything possible to keep from going bald. Meanwhile, the bald eagle does nothing to stop baldness.
Long ago, beavers were forced to survive endangerment caused by Indians and early settlers, which trapped the animal for fur. Did beavers complain, try to file suit against the government? No, they accepted their role for the greater good. And now beavers are everywhere. But the eagle continues to lack in numbers. And out of fear they migrate every few months. Beavers don't do that. They survived. They built their numbers using a sounder, more structurally complete foundation, just like Americans did in the 1930s when this nation survived The Great Depression.
And now, Americans are endangered again because we took an economical nose dive off a cliff (expecting to fly like an eagle). We have face planted, and now we're wounded, lying flat on our backs watching a falling anvil readying to smash us deeper into the ground just like the Wile E. Coyote, another dumb animal that serves no major, collegiate or professional, flourishing sports team as a mascot.
And right now America is like a coyote that's putting its hope in an eagle.
At this hour of the current timeline of life, most American's don't have the money for health insurance. Beavers don't have money either, yet they move forward while the eagle flaunts its haughty wings on the back of our currency like a pigheaded, egotistical bald monster with feathers (I know, it's frightening).
We must change. We must learn to be more like beavers, a true American symbol.
I thought of this a year ago. I even wrote it down. But it took me nearly 365 days to realize the magnitude of the idea I was sitting on. And it was sports that made this all come full circle.
As much as I hate cardinals, including the actual bird and all sports teams except for Lamar, the NFL Cardinals proved in January that the eagle is the more pathetic species (Arizona 32, Philadelphia 25).
In college football, the Oregon State Beavers knocked off USC last year, saving America of another USC national championship. Texans hate USC and Texans are true Americans. And there are many reasons I base this truth upon.
On top of that list is Buc-ee's, the finest, most ginormous convenient store/gas station in America. It's filled with food, accessories, all shopping needs (even Christmas presents), and of course the most spacious and clean bathrooms you can find on the road, complete with enough toilet paper to TP the White House.
And you can find this marvelous cornerstone of American culture en route to San Antonio and Dallas, cities with fine sports franchises. I mean honestly, what says American better than a pit stop in the name of food, gas and toilets, especially when on the road to a Dallas Cowboys (America's team) game.
With the beaver as the face of its franchise, nothing has slowed Buc-ee's growth, not even the recession. Buc-ee's has the most fantastic advertising campaign ever assembled, a campaign probably built by the same team of people who worked for Obama this past election. Speaking of Obama, his brother-in-law coaches basketball at Oregon State. Coincidence? I think not! Fate — I think the opposite of not. I think ton, tons of hungry beavers.
Plus, those same "Beavers," with the difference being Beavers who played baseball, won the college World Series in 2006, their first ever.
And there are more sports connections. I heard a rumor (one I am making up right now) that Buc-ee's has won 912 straight company softball games against Wal-Mart and Target.
Also in regards to streaks, the Caltech "Beavers" snapped a 207 game-losing streak in basketball this past January, a streak that started in 1996, which is the same year that the Nebraska Cornhuskers won the college football national championship on Jan. 1 in "Arizona" of all places!
And speaking of corn, this year in March Madness, the American "Eagles" could not complete the upset over Villanova.
All this comes well after former NFL coach Dick Vermeil left the Philadelphia "Eagles" to later take over as coach of the St. Louis Rams where he won a Super Bowl by riding the arm of the current "Arizona" quarterback, Kurt Warner, who was a former grocery sacker from Iowa.
I just hope you readers are picking up what I am putting down. Field of Dreams, anyone?
Iowa is a huge corn state.
And Field of Dreams is perhaps my favorite film; but while watching it the other day, I realized that this epic masterpiece of a movie was more about change than baseball. Ray Kinsella "changed" his cornfield into a baseball field. He used a big tractor to mow his corn down, a tractor that probably killed half of the population of residing ghosts (baseball legends) which were living in his cornfields.
If only Kinsella had used beavers to clear out that necessary space.
I mean, what if he had mowed over his dad? There would have been no happy ending, no father-son game of catch, and no Pepsi commercial.
So I plead with you Mr. President. I beg you to change the National Bird to the Beaver. I beg you to forget about the Eagle, forget about the auto industry, forget about Iraq, Iran, Korea, China, Afghanistan, terrorism, Guantanamo Bay and forget about Joe Plumber.
Just focus on the beaver because in this furry animal lies the keys to the metaphorical automobile that this country so desperately needs, the metaphorical tank that can be driven by Captain Joe Plumber, a marine who could free all the plugged up pipe dreams we have of ending all threats against peace.
I beg you, Mr. President to focus on the growth of Buc-ee's. To build them all across Iowa, regardless of what kind of Ecofriendly gas we're selling. I plead with you because people will come.
They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up the driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at the doors as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, the owners will say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they'll eventually have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to their tailgates; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved parking somewhere between the painted stripes, where they parked when they were children and cheered for their favorite snacks. And they'll watch the cashier hand over the goods as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Barack. The one constant through all the years, Barack, has been beavers. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But beavers have marked the time. This store, these bathrooms: it's a part of our past, Barack. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Barack. People will most definitely come.