You take on certain challenges whenever you take Bucky Badger out for a photo shoot. When you choose a location, you’ve got to plan a route with doorways and passages that are high and wide enough to allow his massive head to pass through. You need to be sure that the situation you put him in is appropriate for a family-oriented mascot.
You’ve got to dodge the paparazzi.
Bucky is the UW’s number-one celebrity. People like to be photographed with him. When we decided to put together a shoot with Bucky playing cards in Rathskeller, we knew we’d have to get him from the Alumni House (home to Badger Insider’s global headquarters) to the Memorial Union, which meant crossing the Union Terrace. On September 1, which was a game day.
It was my job to lead Bucky to the shoot, and at 1 in the afternoon, the crowd on the Terrace was not yet a throng. Still, we were stopped every five or ten feet by students, alumni, and families who wanted to get a shot of themselves with the world’s most famous member of the genus Taxidea. Ultimately, it took us only 12 minutes to shoot the picture that you see on this issue’s cover. But you’d have to triple that time to allow for transit from the A House to the Rat and back.
—Photos by Wendy Krause Hathaway '04
