Marty’s out, but Parker has an identity crisis

They already had a name-the- mascot contest over at the city.

Now all we need is a name-the-species contest.

Possibly your life has been consumed enough with other things that you haven’t noticed the Spokane parks department got a new mascot. Parker is “green and blue and 6-foot-2!” as the department says. He has a bow tie, a cap, and a white belly and snout. He looks vaguely animal-like.

“It’s a critter,” said Mike Aho, the city’s recreation supervisor. “We’re not even sure what it is.”

What Parker is not is a marmot. However warmly we have embraced the marmot as a mascot of Spokane, the city’s parks department has forsaken it for something generic.

The previous parks mascot, Marty, was definitely a marmot. But Marty Marmot has gone to that great Gopher Hole in the Sky – along with the hundreds of other nuisance marmots dispatched around here every year.

Aho said that part of the reason Marty was retired – in addition to age and wear on the decade-old costume – was the fact that marmots damage parklands and carry diseases. It’s a little hard for the parks folks to celebrate a big, cute, furry marmot while trying to chase away small, cute, furry marmots when they start burrowing and eating all the flowers.

“They are rodents,” Aho said.

Though, as Aho himself is quick to note, so is Mickey Mouse. And you don’t see Disneyland replacing him with a critter of unknown origin. Most of us can handle the compartmentalization involved with separating a cartoon mouse – which we will foist on our children – from the mice in our basement – which we will gladly put to death.

The city’s Parks and Recreation Department is not putting marmots to death. When marmots become a problem, the city has them trapped and moved – at a cost of about $1,800 this year, not including damage they cause, said Tony Madunich, manager of park operations.

So you can understand how park officials might not be big marmot lovers. Aho said the old Marty Marmot mascot suit had been retired for several years before being sent off to a Canadian company to be redesigned. The total cost, including staff time, was around $5,000 – about 1.5 percent of the department’s annual marketing budget.

“More than anything else it was just time for a change,” he said.

But if we’re going to have a mascot – and I’m having a hard time getting all that worked up about it, honestly – we might as well have a mascot that is particular to the city.

Nothing fits that bill like marmots. They live in our signature park. They dominate any pick-a-mascot category in the Inlander’s annual readers poll. They lend their name to the Bloomsday kids run (the Marmot March) and a local women’s rugby club.

When the extreme-cake makers on TV’s “Ace of Cakes” made a Riverfront Park cake, they included little candy marmots.

The Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau – which, full disclosure, employs my wife – commissioned a broadcast ad last year with a pair of talking marmots, Stan and Benny, discussing why people visit Spokane. Stan says: “I think they come here to take photos of us. Because we’re so darn good-looking.”

Yet an animal-control expert told the newspaper in 2008 that he gets more than 1,000 complaints about marmots each year. Hundreds are trapped and killed, or moved, annually. The animals stand accused of chewing up car wiring, attacking pets and destroying landscaping.

Which may be the reason the marmot, while commonly seen as a local icon, isn’t embraced by everyone. Walt Carlson, an employee at 2nd Look Books, designed a marmot mascot for the store about a year ago – Marvin the Marmot.

Carlson said some people recognize the creature as a marmot and some do not. His feelings about the mascot might best be described as lukewarm.

“I think it has a ways to go before it’s beloved,” he said.

Which brings us back to Parker, who probably has even further to go. If I had to assign him a species, I’d say bear-dog. Or gopher-pig. Or nutria-rat. Or irradiated beaver-squirrel.

Parker hasn’t made many public appearances yet, but Aho said they’re trying to rethink what the mascot can be. Instead of simply showing up at events and hugging kids, he’d like to see the mascot doing things – riding new rides at Riverfront Park, for example – and then filming that to help promote the parks.

But first, they need to hire the inner Parker – the person to wear the suit. That will be part of one employee’s job description.

“We just interviewed somebody for the position,” Aho said, noting that specialized skills may be required. “We’re going to have to get someone in there who can snowboard.”

That’s something Marty would never be able to do. Marmots hibernate.