Turkey becomes US bird, alternative American symbols?

one thing that would be ripe for parody if the US adopts the rattlesnake as its national animal is that Mexico's primary symbol is an eagle perched on a cactus eating a rattlesnake
 

mojojojo

Gone Fishin'
Franklin wrote it in a private letter to his daughter and never publicly said it at all. He was making fun of the Society of Cincinnati and saying that their bald eagle emblem looked more like a turkey. He disliked the way its members seemed to be creating a quasi-nobility and was drawing a comparison between the nobility's lazy ways of and what he considered the more honest nature of the common man.
See, stuff like this is why I love this site so much:cool:
 
isn't the bald eagle also unique to the Americas, or does it range over into Siberia? One problem with using animals unique to the Americas is that a lot of them aren't all that interesting... the biggest and neatest animals have counterparts in Europe. So what's unique? the rattlesnake, the hummingbird, the turkey, prairie dogs, mountain lion... all in all, I prefer the bald eagle. At least it's a magnificent looking bird...
 
I, too, like the rattlesnake, especially when contemplating alternate versions of those anti-colonial, black-and-white, political satire cartoons. Imagine a cartoon with a giant rattlesnake spawled across the Pacific Ocean, tightening its coils around Hawaii, Alaska, the Philippines, Panama, Guam, etc.
 
I, too, like the rattlesnake, especially when contemplating alternate versions of those anti-colonial, black-and-white, political satire cartoons. Imagine a cartoon with a giant rattlesnake spawled across the Pacific Ocean, tightening its coils around Hawaii, Alaska, the Philippines, Panama, Guam, etc.


Yeah that’s the thing, snakes are almost never associated with anything good. If you refer to someone as a snake it’s very rarely a compliment.


America, a nation of snakes. Does that have a great ring to it?
 
Maybe Ben Franklin and Co. figure it's high time somebody got to changing that connotation...besides, America IOTL ain't exactly a "nation of eagles" either, or at least I've never heard that kind of phrase used before in seriousness.
 
isn't the bald eagle also unique to the Americas, or does it range over into Siberia? One problem with using animals unique to the Americas is that a lot of them aren't all that interesting... the biggest and neatest animals have counterparts in Europe. So what's unique? the rattlesnake, the hummingbird, the turkey, prairie dogs, mountain lion... all in all, I prefer the bald eagle. At least it's a magnificent looking bird...

The coyote's not a bad choice, though I'm not sure if their range extended that far east in the days of the early United States. A few other interesting North-American-endemic species might include the pronghorn (though outside the range of the US at the time), American black bear, common raccoon, American alligator, and North American porcupine. The porcupine as a symbol evokes similar ideas as the rattlesnake, as seen in the flag of Free State Project.

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