Our Dogs Have Doppelgängers

I know it means a person's clone or resemblance. And I had fun finding my double and Steve's double a couple years ago on the Internet. 

People all over would mistake Steve for Huell Howser. My Steve was on TV a lot thoughout Ventura County and some of L.A. with his long-running safety video during the months of September and October. (still will be showning) The videos were also shown on each city's public information channel and easy to get my Steve mixed-up with the "other guy" TV is where they knew him. He fit in Public Broadcasting,

My daughter, Kiely and I were on our way to her new college in Utah. It was the Spring semester and she was jumping-in to a College and town where she had hardly visited, but knew she wanted to go there.

We laughed about their mascot the Badger. Kiely was the mascot for her high school and did it really... as a gift for her grandfather, a former teacher at Santa Paula High School. My father-in-law loved the cast members of Disneyland. The characters!

I joked about the Badger mascot suit and I told her if Badger was the name, there must be Badgers around Utah. I heard this HUGE lecture about how she's never even seen a real Cardinal in her life and we really don't have any live ones here at all. I started thinking about all the crazy names that high schools and colleges have for their mascot.

Before I had completed that thought, I saw one by the road near Salina, Utah. Nah, it'd be hibernating. It wasn't a few miles more by the Palasaide Lake, there was obviously another Badger, this time it had been hit by a car. They don't hibernate? What?

I promptly gave her the same mean Badger story that my dad told me. I told her our Badgers in Santa Paula are brown and up close both have faces a bit like a skunk, black and white or gray, white and brown like this one. I thought if we could we'd stop or slow-down and look at it see if it was a Badger. We saw it! Actually, it looked like a opossum coloring, and did have darker stripes on its face and a bushy tail. 

Right then I knew what that Badger reminded me of ...and why it looked so familiar.

             Our dogs look like Badgers! 

I had to tell Kiely all over again to not touch them or try and feed any wild animals. Ha! Like I have any control over her. Her years at GBEEC took my daughter to a new "tree-hugging" era. Kiely turned into Snow White, even (shiver) catching bats that got in the Lodge and releasing them to the tree tops.

I'm going to miss her Utah Valley and The Big Badger and get myself ready for "The Cowboys" in Wyoming. I am quite familiar with those critters.