Tolkkinen: Minnesota counties, you, too can find your inner otters

CLITHERALL, MINN. - As the only Minnesota county named after a fur-bearing mammal, Otter Tail County’s marketing campaigns pretty much write themselves.

“Find your inner otter!” invites the Otter Tail Lakes Country Association, a nearly 50-year-old nonprofit marketing and economic development organization.

(Just, please, not the sort of otter that attacked three women floating down a Montana river in 2023.)

We here in Otter Tail County are inundated with otter images. We’ve got statues.

We’ve got their playful mugs plastered on road signs.

And, yes, we have real otters. I’ve seen them crossing roads, and a few years ago one scampered past our farmhouse in broad daylight.

During an agriculture discussion in Marshall, Minn., this summer, Julie Tesch, president and CEO of the Center for Rural Policy and Development, praised how Otter Tail County draws attention to itself.

She urged other communities to do something similar. Something kitschy. Something fun.

But what is a community to do if they’re named after some boring 1800s statesman? Where’s the kitsch in Kittson? Names like Pennington or Meeker don’t exactly lend themselves to hand puppets.

But, where there’s a will, there’s a way, me old McMama used to say, so here are a few super helpful suggestions for mascots and marketing slogans for greater Minnesota counties.

Cook County: No question. The tip of the arrowhead region would benefit from a chubby little French logging camp chef with a handlebar mustache and a flair for flipping flapjacks.

Crow Wing County: You folks lucked out here. This Minnesota county was actually named after the river, which was named after an island the shape of a crow wing, but if Crow Wing County actually needs additional marketing, crows are intelligent and lively and would eat up TikTok.

Hubbard County: Stay away from nursery rhymes. Nothing to be gained by identifying with a woman and her starving dog. Instead, because so many people make the 3½-hour drive to Park Rapids from the Twin Cities for vacation, I’d go with something like, “Skip the drive. Just move here.”

Kandiyohi County: Kandi is the Dakota name for buffalo fish, according to the book Minnesota Geographic Names. But use a little imagination and there’s a prancing, waving candy bar inviting people to bike and hike its many trails.

Koochiching County: A baby theme, obviously. Koochie Koo? Everybody loves babies. They’d be overrun by newcomers and tourists.

Lyon County: Easy peasy. Granted, lions are not native to Minnesota, but when did that ever stop a marketing genius? And who doesn’t love a cute, stuffed, yellow-maned lion?

Mahnomen County: Mahnomen, a variation of the Ojibwe word for wild rice, doesn’t seem cute and kitschy on the surface, but hear me out: a character from a grain of wild rice! You could call him Manny the Mahnomen.

Polk County: Come on. Tell me you didn’t think of a big finger poking a belly. Boop!

Pope County: I know there are a lot of Lutherans here, but have you considered a display of all the popes throughout Christendom?

Rock County. There are all kinds of possibilities for this farming county in Minnesota’s southwestern corner, not all of which involve licensing agreements with the Rolling Stones. What about Rock County Rocks? Paint pebbles with funny expressions and sneak ’em into social media. Almost as good as a puppet.

Big Stone County. Rock County gets the pebbles, so we wouldn’t want to repeat that theme, but there is an obvious marketing slogan here, especially if someone opens a cannabis dispensary. It is legal now, so why not?

Stearns County: A grumpy old man character. People love grumpy old men because they provide relief from having to be Minnesota Nice. They made a whole movie about them in the 1990s. Two movies, actually.

I’m sorry, Pennington, all I could think of is writing pens, so you could host writer’s workshops. And Faribault, nobody is even sure how to pronounce your name correctly, so I sort of gave up.