Tall tales

Talkeetna is a small Alaskan town (population around 900). There is very little to distinguish it from other similar remote places.  Its main claim to fame ended in 2009 when the annual Moose Dropping Festival erupted into chaos and violence. 

The festival comprised a two-day celebration held each July.  The highlight was a lottery where participants would place bets on numbered, varnished pieces of moose droppings that were dropped from a helicopter onto a target.  Sadly, according to the Anchorage Daily News, the 2009 festival turned into a "weekend of mayhem" with "a lot of drunken, high, stupid people doing stupid things."  Worst of all, the manager of Nagley's General Store had his bike stolen.  Mayhem, indeed.  Unsurprisingly, the festival has not been repeated since 2009.  The Daily News is silent on whether the inhabitants are still polishing their moose turds and what they do with them now that they can't do the obvious and drop them from a helicopter.

So, since 2009, there has been nothing more to say about life in Talkeetna.   Until, that is, the story of Mayor Stubbs hit the international headlines.

As politicians go, Mayor Stubbs of Talkeetna takes some beating.  He’s celebrating 15 years in office, has an almost 100% approval rating and has never raised taxes at any time. He is totally untainted by scandal.  There are no suggestions of financial impropriety, no sex scandals and no accusations of lucrative contracts being awarded to close friends and associates.  He is a clean, decent citizen who goes about his daily tasks with a quiet dignity almost unknown in the sometimes grubby world of politics where pride and inflated egos often flourish.

There are only two things wrong with this story.  The first is that Mayor Stubbs is actually a cat.  The story is that he was initially put forward as a joke candidate for mayor but easily beat the two human candidates.

The second is that the story isn’t true. 

The false feline tale was launched by an Alaskan TV station and rapidly spread around the world.  Headline writers couldn’t resist references to the cat’s pyjamas; and the non-word “purrfect” appeared many times.  What everyone had missed in the original piece were the words “as the story goes”.

Apparently, Talkeetna doesn’t actually have a mayor and the district mayor who covers Talkeetna is a man. 

All is not lost, however.  The feline Mayor Stubbs does actually exist, resides at the aforesaid Nagley’s General Store and is unofficially regarded as the honorary mayor of the town, though he has never been elected.  All that has happened is that, by accident or design, Mayor Stubbs has been turned into an international tourist attraction.

So maybe the story isn’t such a catastrophe (sorry!) after all.  Having someone in office who doesn’t actually do any harm but attracts tourists and revenue doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.  

I pause here for someone to say “don’t we already have a more expensive version of that with our monarchy?” but I’d rather not go there.

What the whole episode maybe demonstrates is how open we are to the idea that no political leadership is better than the bad leadership of cynical, self-interested politicians, whatever their political complexion.  It seems that we might prefer our politicians to be not red, blue, yellow or even green but tabby. 

After all, a couple of years ago, Belgium managed to go 541 days with no government at all without too many negative consequences.  If only the unimaginative Belgians had thought of appointing a handsome Belgian Shepherd dog as prime minister, they might have lived off the tourist influx for years.  And if they had launched a lottery based on collecting his turds, polishing them and dropping them from a helicopter, the whole Euro crisis might have been averted. 

Frau Merkel, remember that you read it here first – and give due credit to Mayor Stubbs and the good citizens of Talkeetna.