Horse Count 2009
August 9, 2009

We posted a Wednesday Where Is It (WWII) picture last Sunday for all to guess at. It was of an old window. Apparently there are many old windows in town. Not one single dedicated subscriber located the window. We are going to leave this window open for now (and the window of opportunity for someone to make a correct guess and win a t-shirt). On Friday, we had another contest. It was the 6th annual "Guess the Number of Horses in the Fiesta Parade" Contest.

With the authority of five previous horse counts under our saddle, we can say with strong conviction, that this year was a horsey horse parade. The only parade with more hooves in the last six years was the 2005 parade. And, this parade showed a 13% increase from the year before. This year we counted 496 horses, 49 mules, and 1 burro (wasn't that burro cute?).

For the record, we took our count after the part of the parade where a rider was injured, and before the part of the parade where the cart went off the path and injured a spectator.

For the contest on Friday, horseplayer guesses centered around last year's number. Reese325 had good horse sense to see the increase coming, guessing 494 horses. That was good enough to win an Edhat t-shirt, pickupable at Santa Barbara Arts in La Arcada.

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