Meet Division II school’s scary (yet awesome) unofficial mascot: The Fighting Okra (video)

In the town of Cleveland, Miss., an idyllic community (because that’s what you say about places you have never heard of and assume they are nice) in the Mississippi River Delta, sits the small college of Delta State University.

Tradition dictates that the school’s official mascot is the Statesmen, who in its own right casts a disturbing, slightly intimidating shadow, but if you ask anyone in town, the mascot that the community really rallies behind is The Fighting Okra, an imposing mascot apparently prone to maladaptive behavior, yet despite its shortcomings, retains its place in the heart of Delta State University students.

The Fighting Okra even has its own website, FearTheOrka.com, where one can learn all there is to know about the imposing anthropomorphized flowering plant from the mallow family, including the Okra Legend:

Born of athletic lore, The Fighting Okra (vegetablis meanus) is a vegetable-like creature that inhabits flat lands of the Mississippi Delta. Although there have been sightings reported from all over North America (the Okra has been featured on The David Lettermen Show, The Food Network, and in Playboy Magazine), the highest concentration of sightings comes from the central region of the Delta around the campus of Delta State University in the town of Cleveland. The Fighting Okra is usually described as a large, prickly, bipedal vegetable with an inherently bad temperament and has been adopted by the students at Delta State University as the their unofficial mascot.

Bad temperament, indeed, as evidenced by his aggressive interaction with one student in the following video:

Yowsers. Quite the frightening character. You definitely want to stay on that mascot’s good side.

One question: if The Fighting Okra and Nightmare Ant were ever to engage in a fight-to-the-death battle, who would win? Hard to say, but there would be much collateral damage, believe you me.

[H/T SB Nation]