Woodsy Owl: A Beautiful and Cosmic Story
Okay, this wank is small, old, and played out over a period of several years, but it's too beautiful (and cosmic!) not to share. It came to my attention when Josh Fruhlinger of The Comics Curmudgeon fame posted about it on Facebook.

So Woodsy Owl is a cousin of Smokey Bear. Woodsy is a mascot for the US Forest Service whose original slogan was "Give a hoot -- don't pollute!" (It has since been updated to the not quite so owl-relevant or metrically sound "Lend a hand -- care for the land!") The official story seems to be that Woodsy was created in 1970 by a marketing agent named Harold Bell, who developed the mascot with a couple Forest Service employees.

Cue outrage on Woodsy's Wikipedia Talk page from not one, but several people who are convinced that they personally created Woodsy when they were kids, as part of some kind of national contest. Others claim it was a spouse, a friend, or a relative.



One of my favorites is user Giveahootdontpolute:

mary gail ainsworth (lapan)wrote this slogan in the 4th grade the forestry commission denied me of my slogans rights and violated my rights concerning the owls image !

Later, she returns to elaborate on this statement, this time bringing threats:

let one more person say they wrote my slogan and they will be added to this lawsuit!the forrestry commision knows the slogan came from shady grove school in laurel mississippi from a girl named mary gail ainsworth!me and me alone they gave me a first place prize certificate do you have one of those ?no you dont .

And a dramatic backstory:

mary gai ainsworth ,attended shady grove school in laurel mississippi ,she was illigally adopted into a family at age 4.Her mother was a heiress,her father was a billionaire! Robbed of her inherritance because of the adpotion i be d--- if anyone takes anything else from me! mary gail lapan

I also love this beautifully incoherent entry from user Argus10:

As an illustrator and environmental enthusiast working in my life both professionally and privately I have become astounded at the experiences received while uncovering the history behind the owl. Initially I rather staunchly attempted to reclaim what I felt was the historical information gathered over the years from newspaper articles, life histories and other information sources normally taken for granted in academia and the media. If I had known what has been revealed to me over the past few years in the beginning it probably would not have made a difference considering the fact it appears very little has changed in the world pertaining to greed. In fact apparently things have gotten undeniably worse. I sought to create a historical account of what happened, after all that is what I had been trained to do in graduate school. What I found was a rigid information gathering iconoclastic circus that had no intention of hearing or seeing the truth in how a simple shall we say undressed bird and slogan were originally depicted and presented to the world at large. After submitting a bit of documented information to the halls of historical copy-right despotism it was clear they where waiting for me with rebuffs. Those slightly toned down once the realisation set into motion the fact that amid contested confusion over the designer togs an assigned gender gave power to a bully denying all the previous children's award winning embellishments. Clearly the bird now male has a registry of documented parents. Historical fiction is now up for interpretation. So be it, truth apparently in this world comes at a premium worth threatening peoples integrity with lawsuits and stooping to blatant attacks against mental equity, low to say the least. Facticity been told, starlight and change the bird as you will, the touch, timing and original talent will always belong to me unharmed by discredit. What happened was a beautiful and cosmic story too precious to be sullied by print or a comic strip.



There's also some bonus wank in there about South Park and some kind of government sanctioned Woodsy costume burning. Plus people have started trolling the talk page (I'm assuming they came from Josh's post on Facebook).

ETA OMG you guys, OMG! Someone has been tampering with the Wiki talk page. Giveahootdonpolute's entries have been bahleeted, as have the more recent trolly entries mentioned above. Also, there's more of this madness here, with yet more people claiming that they, or friends/relatives/acquaintances created Woodsy. This just gets weirder and weirder.

ETA 2 This article from the Forest History Society attempts to explain the bizarre "I created Woodsy" phenomenon (see the grey box on the last page).