Ocotillo Testicle Festival

Yesterday was a busy day at the museum.  Our newest intern, Jacob, arrived on Friday so Saturday was his first day at work. Two volunteers from Imperial Valley College, Phil and Ivan, came over and helped us with curating artifacts. Saturdays are my day for curating instead of archiving.  I'm working on the Percy Palmer lantern slide collection- cleaning them, re-housing them, cataloging them, and eventually they will be digitized.

Lazy Lizard Saloon, one of Ocotillo's  main tourist attractions

Right at 3pm we closed up and headed into town to the Lazy Lizard Saloon to attend the last part of the Ocotillo Testicle Festival. It's held by the Ocotillo Optimist Society and all the proceeds go to supporting local children's education- backpacks of school supplies, scholarships, playground equipment, haircuts, etc. I was a little skeptical of the Festival at first. The flyer described a BBQ with "Lizard Testicles, Lizard Tails, Lizard Parts and much more. The real thing (testicles) this year compliments of the Lazy Lizard." The festival was from 1pm "until the lizards come home" (which meant about 4 when the raffle prizes ran out.

Jessica tells the story of last year's BBQ when the locals convinced her the RoadKill BBQ really was roadkill (turned out to be chicken) so you can see the kind of humor we're dealing with in Ocotillo. This time there was potato salad, hot dogs, and other normal BBQ fare (including some awesome homemade chocolate chip cookies). There were also testicles. Not lizard, but bull. Jessica, Ivan and I manned up and tried them but Phil and Jacob declined. I don't know if that says anything to the psychologists out there or not.

Lazy Lizard Saloon

Let me just say up front: if anyone ever tries to tell you that bull testicles taste like chicken- they lie. It was actually pretty disgusting. I don't know how much of that was a mental thing, but frying them did not help. But I can now say I've done it, and that's pretty much the point right? It's always an adventure.