Thursday, July 30, 2009

Chicken Poo B-i-n-g-o

Since my garden is awaiting the Raised Bed Fairy to come in the middle of the night and leave behind beautiful hand-crafted raised beds for me to plant our fall crop, I've decided to focus on chickens this week because I am not waiting for any kind of chicken fairy to magically appear.

This blog entry is not for the overly-polite readers. You've gotta be okay with exploring a little bit of the crass underbelly of the chicken world. We're not talking cock-fighting. We're talking chicken sh*t b-i-n-g-o.

Really.


Oddly enough I heard about this on Time magazine's website. I found a delightful little video showing how chicken sh*t b-i-n-g-o works, complete with interviews of the founders of this wonderful event. If you decide to watch the video, be prepared to hear the phrase "chicken sh*t" repeatedly, so don't watch it at work or in front of the kids or with grandma.

Click here to watch the video on Time.com

A group of people betting on which square a chicken will poo on is something you have to see to fully appreciate.

I am not new to the world of animal defecation gambling. When I was in college a popular event was Moo Poo B-i-n-g-o. The student association roped off an enormous square of grass on campus and used chalk (like the kind to spray-paint white lines on a ball field) to mark out a checkerboard pattern on the grass. Each square was numbered and a crude fence of tape and wooden 1x2 posts was placed around the edge of the field.

Students could buy a square for a small sum of money - about $2-$5, I think. The proceeds all went to some worthy charity. Us college students sat around the large grass checkerboard and cheered when a big-bellied dairy cow was led onto the grass. An old guy in overalls had the cow on a rope leash and was walking her back and forth across all the squares so each person got an equal chance of winning.

When the cow stopped, we all gasped. When the cow peed, we all prematurely started to cheer and then let out a huge "Awwwwwww……" of disappointment.

Finally, after an eternity, the cow pooped. The poop splattered into two squares, but the rules stated that the initial point of impact was the winner. Some lucky kid jumped up and grabbed his prize - it was about $100 I think - a small fortune when you're in college. The several hundred dollars from our entry fees went to a charity and the field was cleared for the following day's event.

It really is an awesome way to raise money for a charity. Back then I used to work for the college newspaper and I did a story on the event. I recall asking the organizers why they picked a cow as the animal of choice. The answer was simple: Cows are big, generally calm, and poop a lot, And you need an animal who's guaranteed to poop to make it successful. An animal that has one large dollop of poo is much better than an animal that walks and leaves a trail of small poo, such as a goat.

I suppose chicken sh*t b-i-n-g-o is just a smaller scale version of the same thing. Maybe "poultry poo b-i-n-g-o" would be more socially acceptable, but likely less popular in that biker bar shown on the Time website's video.

Aren't you glad I brought all this to your attention? I'm sure my mom is very proud of what I learned in college after reading this.

(NOTE: I had to change all the "b" words to b-i-n-g-o with dashes the hopes of avoiding a horrible spammer who has commented about 5 times a day for about 6 months now with b-i-n-g-o website links. I'm hoping by cutting out the "b" word in my post that this spammer might give up on this post since I'm sure it's just an automated robot scanning blogs for the "b" word and then writing the same comment with links to "b" websites. My next step is to delete the photo since it's saved with a "b" word that the spammer could pick up on. I'm so sick of these daily spammer comments that I'll delete this post if they don't go away.)

9 comments:

hidinginmygarden said...

Hi Skills,
I am waiting on that fairy too, so if you see it, please send it down under!
:)

Kelly said...

I love the animal poo games, talk about turning lemons into lemonade!! (I of course, am also known to swear like a sailor so this only makes sense right?)

Good luck with your raised beds. Have you decided on sizes and quantity? Choice of building materials?

I didn't have the blog when we were building the garden (me, kicking myself)so there is no photo detail of the build, but the post titled "Garden Tour" should come up on the link below. It may help you get a feel for what you would and wouldn't want to do size and depth wise etc. Let me know if I can answer any questions, raised beds rock!!

http://howkellysgardengrows.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

Lo said...

OMG Kate that is too funny! Makes like interesting for sure.

Annie*s Granny said...

Kate, do you own shares in a computer keyboard company? Do you know how many times you've caused me to spew my coffee all over mine? Funny stuff!

Now I must go out to my garden and kill something, so I'll be prepared for tomorrow.

Ribbit said...

Ah, yet one more way our lives can revolve around other people's, or for that matter, animal's s**t.

Gather up the neighborhood kids and start a game yourself. It's a good way to make money, and it's not gambling if gifts instead of cash money are awarded.

Think of it as donations for the crystal cathedral of chicken houses.

Jeff Vandiver said...

Kate, that is really funny! I'd hate to think what the rednecks in my town would come up with for the type animal used.....Anyway, the raised bed fairy doesn't exist! Farmer B will have to get all dressed up like one, then get busy building it. Ha! The construction part is actually enjoyable, but filling it sucks! Let me know if I can help....

Amy said...

Of all the things you learned in college that would make mama proud, I'm going to guess (since I don't actually know you) that there could be much worse than Moo Poo Bingo :-)

I'm pretty sure when there's a game involving chicken s***, there's really no need to try and make it socially acceptable.

Sounds like it could be fun!

Vonnie said...

That's hilarious and is it weird that I think that would be fun? BTW I'm a Grandma and sh** is the one word I'm still trying to take out of my vocabulary! The kids swear that if the baby says it, it will be my fault. Now I'l be cracking up when I stub my toe and yell it out and see chicken bingo in my mind.

Lynne's Somewhat Invented Life said...

This is so stinkin' funny.

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