Cow patty bingo

My mom chastised me the other day for referring to the people in the homeland as "crazies," but then today she turns around and just gives me ammunition. Granted, its not the same kind of crazy that I've referred to in the past — so now there's crazy and there's the crazies. Can you appreciate the difference? The crazies are the ultra right-leaning Republicans known to reside up there in the N'West corner of Iowa. (Side note: Not everyone that lives in that region is a crazie.) Crazy is what happens after eating nothing but corn for a month. Now, here's the crazy story:

The doorbell rings while I'm on the phone with my mom. She says, "Oh, its just Pete here to sell me a cow patty bingo ticket."

Me: Say what? Was that even English? What are you talking about?

Mom: Pete, explain cow patty bingo to my daughter while I go get my purse.

So Pete tells me that cow patty bingo is where a group (the trail club, in his case) transforms a field into a grid with numbered squares and sells tickets with corresponding numbers. Then they put a cow in the middle of the grid and let it wandered around for as long as it wants until it takes a dump. If your ticket matches the square that the cow poops in, you win — $2,000 in this case.

"Does that attract a big crowd?" I ask Pete.

"No. Not really. And last time it took up the better part of a second hour," he said.

Me: Well, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard.

He laughs.

My mom returns. "You're gonna tell everyone that you know about this, aren't you?"

Me: Yep. I'm putting it on the blog right now.

Cow patty bingo? Really? I'd heard of cow tipping ... but that's not real. So I Googled it to see if this is a real phenomenon or if the crazies have just gone crazy. Turns out to be real. But it seems wrong somehow. Doesn't the cow deserve some privacy to do his/her business? Or what if it is constipated?

Do the PETA people know about this? :-)