Mardi Gras – It’s Not Just for People

Tuesday – the 30th of January – it was 71 degrees at noon. 71 degrees! Three hours later it was snowing. Ugh. As I was driving around town, I watched the reading in my car thermometer drop to 62, then to 52, then to 35 –in less than in hour. It’s enough to drive otherwise sane people to extreme acts, like dressing up their dogs in dainty outfits and marching them down city streets. Hmm, must be Mardi Gras time.

St. Louis is an unlikely place to host one of the largest Mardi Gras parties in the USA. For one thing, if you live in North America you may have noticed that Mardi Gras happens in winter. Generally speaking, the huge Mardi Gras events are all in warm weather climates – Rio, New Orleans, Mobile, Sydney. There’s a good reason for this. The thought of standing on a sidewalk for hours in freezing temperatures, begging strangers dressed in pastel outfits to throw plastic beads your way does not typically inspire the masses to action – except in St. Louis. Our Mardi Gras is a little different, though. In other parts of the world taking a minor to Mardi Gras would be considered child endangerment. In St. Louis it’s like going to Aunt Opal’s for Thanksgiving dinner. Sure, we have the usual amount of mass drunkenness – just like at Aunt Opal’s. We just prefer that people keep their clothes on while doing so. I think this is more for practical reasons than prudishness, however. After all, digging through three layers of clothing to flash some skin is just too damn much work.

Given our family friendly atmosphere, I guess the Barkus Pet Parade is strangely appropriate. It’s a smaller event than the Grand Parade, there are only thousands of spectators instead of hundreds of thousands, but it still has its share of drunks, and you get to dress your dog in drag and march with thousands of other people who share your fetish. The dog parade has more unashamed gender bending than the June Pride event more associated with cross-dressing! Naturally, I couldn’t wait to find out what all the fuss was about.

The weather on Sunday couldn’t have been much better – 60 and sunny. This followed two weeks of bracingly cold weather, which followed a couple of unseasonably warm days. Like I said, it’s enough to drive an otherwise sane person to extreme acts. The parade itself had but a single float, a dog food manufacturer, followed by 60 minutes of brightly attired dogs walking their more conventionally coiffed owners. The dogs were the stars of the show, if only they could quit sniffing each other’s butts long enough to enjoy the spotlight. I could say a lot more, but I think I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. (Also check out the Mardi Gras Pet Parade photo album for a lot more photos.)

After the last dog sashayed past me, I was primed for more fun. Lucky for me, there was another event to keep my attention: the Wiener Dog Derby. Some 300 dachshunds of various shapes and textures – shiny, furry, long, tiny, squat – were grouped by age into three divisions: Ballpark Franks, Hot Dogs, and Cocktail Wieners. At race time, the dogs lined up six at a time for a 20 foot sprint between hay bales. Some left their boxes with jet-like speed, but many simply wandered around sniffing all the wonderful new smells. With 300 dogs and only 6 slots per race, the whole thing takes awhile to get through. I kinda got the joke after the first race, so I didn’t stick around for the big finish. As I walked back to my car, carefully dodging drunks along the way, I wondered: what would a parrot look like in a tutu?