Who Could Resist Rooster With Sidney Moo Cow on His Back?

It wasn’t exactly the Rose Parade, not with the rooster prancing about or the goat wearing a straw hat. But it was a competition, and they needed judges and, well, I don’t have an exciting social life, so ...

So I sat there last week in the livestock arena at the Orange County Fair, one of five judges for the annual Barnyard Fashion Parade. If that sounds like easy duty, you try determining under deadline which is more creative--a Holstein wearing a beret or a goat in a wraparound skirt.

The other four judges seemed equally aware of the pressure. “Are there actually categories to be judged?” asked Jeremy Simmons, a physical therapist at St. Jude Medical Center. Little did he know there were five categories: Most Creative, Most Original, Funniest, Best Dressed and Best Theme, and that we would name first- and second-place winners. Most of us weren’t sure how those categories differed, but we did the best we could.

The fashion parade was the brainstorm 40 years ago of Kathleen Huff, now 86 and the persuasive woman who talked me into judging.

“We like to get someone from The Times or The Register,” she had said on the phone earlier in the week. “The last time your paper sent someone, though, he yapped and yapped the whole time about it.”

I could have told her we have a lot of immature people around here who also wouldn’t know a barrow from a gilt if you turned them both upside down.

No problem with an old Nebraska boy like me, however, and I was rarin’ to go. I got there about 30 minutes early and realized that most of the contestants would be goats. That explained why Huff’s daughter, Martha, sounded so happy when, just before the competition, she shouted, “We’ve got a rooster, Mom!”

Indeed they did, but I made a mental note not to give the rooster an edge just for being the only fowl in the show. Turns out, however, the old boy put on quite a show as he romped into the pen with a toy animal on his back.

“What the heck is that?” I asked Debbie Rose, a kinesiologist and the judge seated next to me.

“A chicken,” she replied.

“I know it’s a chicken. I mean the thing on its back.”

We learned that was Sidney the Moo Cow, and that was enough in my book to give first place in the Funniest category to the rooster. My colleagues, however, lobbied that he place first in the Most Original category.

With the clock ticking, I caved faster than a French figure-skating judge.

Happily, however, we judges saw things with remarkable similarity. Yes, we came from different walks of life, but apparently unified by knowing how ill-equipped we were to judge, we bonded. My only complaint is that when the handler for one of the goats approached the judges’ table with an offer of jelly beans, no fewer than three of them accepted a handful of beans.

Mind you, this was before the judging had begun. The goat later was rewarded with a first-place ribbon.

Let me just say that isn’t how we do business here at the newspaper.

I later had a small ethical problem in giving an award to a Holstein, not because she was wearing an attractive neckband but because she had produced 21,000 pounds of milk. In the interest of unity, I signed off on it. The cow didn’t help herself by relieving herself in front of the judges’ table for what seemed like an inordinately long time. “I was going to give her ‘Best Dressed’ until that,” Rose said.

In the end, we gave the Overall Sweepstakes award to 9-year-old Ambur Lattin of Cherry Valley, and not just because she spells her name funny. She dressed her goat Billy Bob in a nice shirt and denim jeans (just what Ambur was wearing), then tied a fish to a fishing pole sticking up from Billy Bob’s hindquarters.

That kind of imagination turned the judges’ heads.

In the true spirit of the fair, no angry parents or animals rushed the judge’s table afterward, although the rooster seemed irritated about something.

After collecting myself and finally exhaling when it was over, something Kathleen Huff had said earlier in the week stuck in my mind: “I’ve been told by Times people who have helped out over the years that it was the hardest work they’ve ever done.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.