The Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival

Yesterday we took a trip with some friends to the Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival.



Thomas enjoying a Daddy-eye view of the festival


They had a moose lawn ornament auction at the festival


The central attraction of the Moose Dropping Festival is the dropping of the moose droppings. The local VFW post finds a lot of moose droppings (which, considering the moose diet, are basically sawdust pellets about an inch long each), coats them in lacquer, numbers them and drops them over a target, and then awards prizes based on where they land. When you purchase your poop, you get a souvenir lacquered moose pellet pin with the number of your dropping written on it.



The bags of moose dropping pins

To even be able to purchase a poop you need to get there really early. Our dropping was number 2909 out of 3000, and there were still 5 hours before the big drop when we bought it. During our wait we were able to see most of Talkeetna, eat some reindeer polish sausage and other delectable festival food (including a $4!! cob of fresh Denali corn), and in general have a relaxing afternoon amidst the festivities with the laid-back valley folk and all the crazies that made the 2.5 hour drive from Anchorage to see moose poop drop from the sky.


Somehow all four of us had gotten it into our heads that they were going to drop the droppings from a helicopter, (the back of the official festival t-shirt shows a moose pooping from a bi-plane). Turns out, the lacquered poops were simply placed in a patriotic homemade bag that was hoisted over the target and ripped open.


Finally at the end of the day came the moose dropping dropping:




One funny thing that didn't make it on tape was after the dropping when a lone kid, thinking something akin to a pinata had just happened, ran out to grab some of the candy-looking turds. Everyone screamed, and one of the VFW guys corralled him and turned him around and sent him back off the target area. Thankfully, none of the turds were disturbed from their original landing positions.