(Not to be confused with the Oregon Country Fair)
- Sheep tails go down, goat tails go up.
- Pigs appear to uniformly sleep on their sides with their legs sticking out rigid, presumably because they are too fat to do anything else comfortably. This makes them look like they have fallen over due to the bad pun of a fellow anime character.
- Pigs also have creepy sneer-mouths.
- Goats do not climb out of their pens, even though they seem very capable of doing so.
- Golden pheasants are the bird I would like to be in my next life. (Purely for looks.)
- Horse competitions are wonderfully incomprehensible. We sat in the pavilion for a long time and saw first Clydesdales, then tiny ponies drawing tiny carts, then sleek racing-type horses, then little Peruvean horses with their riders in neckerchiefs and sarapes. They all had to line up while the judge made judgements, and then The Ribbon Lady would come out of the paddock behind them, arms filled with all sorts of ribbons and occasionally a garland of flowers that had to be placed around the horse's neck. The horses tended to be jittery and pointedly despised the neck flowers. One in particular began rearing once they affixed them.
- There is a strict dress code for horsing in general, and there was a lot of absurd cleanliness and primness surrounding the horse stables that one did not see in, say, the cow building where I saw an old lady fast asleep atop an ice chest, a deck of cards splayed from her hand and spilling onto the straw floor. I liked that the ribbon lady was basically in a black t-shirt and jeans, with a backwards red baseball cap.
- We brought snacks to keep things economical. We did end up buying lackluster chicken wings, which were not nearly as delicious as the BBQ smelled, but there you go. I was tempted by ice cream but was instead delighted by frozen orange juice in a skinny ziplock bag.
- Watched glass blowing.
- Renewed my interest in the shapes of people, resolved to go on more people-safaris in the near future. I'm having a size-and-shape problem -- I'm not spicing it up enough to make things interesting, or even believable, really. Certainly not for the State Fair crowd. These people are essentially my demographic (or at least, the most vocally responsive, aside from personal friends) so I need to get on that.
- Angora rabbits would make hilarious house pets.
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