Mascot Parade

[jayfurr]

I have a bizarre fixation on “Champ”, the costumed mascot for our local short-season A minor league baseball team, the Vermont Lake Monsters. Despite the creature obviously just being an employee in a suit, I have a habit of projecting that he’s a barely-tame creature of menace that is only kept under control by being fed copious amounts of ballpark hot dogs.

Carole has grown used to my texting running comments about Champ during games:

Champ makes a lot of public appearances and, if I can, I try to show up. Like I said, it’s weird.

So when the local mall (we’ve only really got one in the whole state, in terms of an actual mall with interior areas and not just a big strip mall) announced that they were going to have an Easter Bunny Mascots Parade this past weekend, I promptly added it to my calendar. Apparently they’ve done this before, getting something like 12 local mascots from various teams and nonprofits and so forth to show up and pose for pictures with kids and the Easter Bunny and so forth. I knew I had to be a part of it.

I was a little disappointed when we didn’t get twelve mascots this time around, but Champ was there, as was the moose mascot of the local hospital, Rally the Catamount from the University of Vermont, a big fishing bob from Lake Champlain International, and the bear mascot from Smuggler’s Notch, one of our local ski area. Oh, and the Easter Bunny.

The kids in attendance mostly stood around dazed — your average three-year-old is kind of overawed by having a giant anthropomorphic fishing bobber looming over him. But we had a good time.

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