Road Apple Roulette

Yesterday was one of my most favorite days of the entire year: Fair Parade Day.


I love the fair parade for several reasons.



It is always a blast to see my former and current kidlets strutin' their stuff as cheerleaders, marching band members, junior miss royalty, and giant dancing vegetables. I was especially proud of this year's dancing taco. See Jalena, I told you that the skills you learned in 8th grade commications class would take you far in life!

The parade is also a time to star-gaze at our local celebrities, like my friend and fellow brancher Jill who waved at her adoring fans from her seat on the cosmetology school float. Elizabeth and Chloe were also on hand to sign autographs, but poor Jessica and Allison spent most of there time trying to avoid the pesky paparazzi.

Of course, the parade itself was pretty cool too.

Some of the floats were fun...

Others were informative...

And one of my favorites was built by loving hands to promote a very worthy cause .

The parade is such a big deal round these parts that the roving concession and souvenir folks even show up. During the course of the parade you could purchase bottled water, soda pop, goofy hats, flags, and.....rabbits.

Never seen a rabbit concession at a parade before? Then you are missing out, my friend. Them rabbits is good eatin'.

Aside from the soon-to-be-bbq-ed rabbits, everyone who attended the parade had a grand old time. Except for this little piggy, who got all dressed up in his fancy hat to show the 4-H kids what is going to happen to their project pigs after the auction on Saturday.

But the highlight of the parade was the many, many horses that participated. The town's equestrian residents played a vital role in the 4-H fund raiser... Road Apple Roulette.

What was that?

You've never heard of road apple roulette before?

Let me explain...

No, wait.

I think I should let our local newspaper explain. Here is an excerpt from last week's paper:

Road apple roulette comes to Burley
By Damon Hunzeker
Times-News writer
BURLEY - The roads of Burley will soon be riddled with manure. The second annual Road Apple Roulette, a fundraiser by the Burley Rotary Club, will be held during the Cassia County Fair parade. The event is kind of like gambling - but with horse droppings, thus the euphemism "road apple."

Rotarians will map out the parade route by GPS into 10,600, 6-foot-by-6-foot squares. Tickets representing the squares are available for $5 or five for $20 at local Mr. Gas stores, as well as a booth outside Wal-Mart. If a horse drops in your square, you win a prize.

Efforts have been taken to prevent rigging the game by people who understand the rudiments of equestrian defecation.

I'm sorry, but I loved that last sentence so much that I just have to put it in again...Efforts have been taken to prevent rigging the game by people who understand the rudiments of equestrian defecation.

Why have those efforts been taken, you ask? Well.... "You can't pick the square. They're randomly selected by a computer," Paul Lyons, the current Rotary president said. "We thought of doing it the other way, but the horse people tell us it happens when the horses get nervous or when they're tired at the end." The "horse people," he said, could purchase tickets that represent squares at the end of the route or, worse, somehow make the horses nervous when they approach certain squares.

Really.


So this is how it works.

The horses walk the parade route and....well....poop along the way. A group of dedicated people then walk behind the horses spray painting circles around the poop piles so that the poop can then be removed from the street.
Then come the gentlemen with the GPS gear who record the exact latitude and longitude of each circle so that the head honchos can determine who ended up with winning squares.

I didn't buy a square during last years parade, and ended up kicking myself every time I drove down overland and saw the lingering remnants of the spray painted poop circles (they were visible until February or so). So this year I was determined to get in on the fun. I bought one square for myself and one for my dad, who has always been a fan of anything as inappropriate as betting on poop.

The winners will be announced during the first round of rodeo action tonight. But as much as I would enjoying winning, I almost hope I don't. Loosing at an event such as this would open the door for a plethora of puns... none of which I could post on this blog or share with decent, upstanding citizens...

...but they will make for one heck of a fun phone call to my dad later on!