Mutton Bustin' at the Puyallup Fair

Sports do not come any better than mutton bustin'. Here's the summary, for you sad sacks who've never witnessed mutton being busted: Since the dawn of recorded time, humankind has manipulated livestock for its own benefit, subjecting sheep and cattle not just to lives of toil but painful indignations such as castration and branding. In return for helping us reach the Industrial Revolution, some kind soul invented muttton bustin', which gives enslaved animals the chance to unload centuries of anger onto our littlest and most tender representatives.

The game is simple. An adult takes a child, who if not bawling yet will soon be, and places it on top of a sheep penned in a corral. The gate is opened and the sheep rockets off with the child hanging onto its neck hair. The pair gain momentum and G forces—the passenger utterly terrified and the driver, not at all looking forward to a return to the cramped stable, having the thrill of its lifetime—until the ride ends with an abrupt discharge of the child into an iron fence. The kid cries, the audience claps, and the process is repeated with the next unlucky, soon-to-be-burdened-with-psych-bills individual.

I caught some mutton bustin' last Saturday at the Puyallup Fair. My video is of horrible quality, but the important parts are there if you look closely: The gradual buildup of speed, the package of fear latched to the animal's back, the roar of the crowd as the kid's head hits the fence like a cannonball. As the number of sheep milling around the arena grew throughout the show, the eventual impact of kid on fence became sandwiched between a buffeting of ambient sheep and an ignominious landing in a pool of fresh sheep urine. Like I said, this is unarguably the apex of sportsdom in the U.S. Where's ESPN?

UPDATE: Injury videos here!