Growing up in Florida, I’ve never known the joy of building a snowman or especially spelling my name in the snow. But something that I didn’t know is that kids in some places that are extremely cold share that problem, as they are unable to sculpt the snow since it obviously turns into ice. Take, for instance, the village of Yolba in Russia, where the below-40 temperature has left the locals with nothing to sculpt. Nothing but hot cow dung, that is.
A building manager by day and dung pioneer by night, Mikhail Bopposov decided that he’d be damned if he was going to let a lack of powder or chainsaws get in his way in making a fun sculpture for the local kids to enjoy during this winter season. So he went out on his farm or ranch or whatever he has and started scooping up the crap from his 17 cows and turned it all into an 880-pound sculpture of a cobra to honor the Chinese Year of the Snake.
Go ahead and soak that whole stinky sentence in.
“I made it so the kids could play around and have some fun,” the native of the Siberian republic of Yakutia told RIA Novosti by phone Friday, speaking about his 400-kilogram creation.
“This is not sculpture, just a piece of work I did,” Bopposov said modestly when asked about his artistic aspirations.
Bopposov first dabbled in the medium in 2008, when, inspired by his military service in a tank division, he created a tank out of dung. Encouraged by the reception from local children and adult villagers alike, he proceeded last winter to mark the Year of the Dragon by sculpting a winged serpent, also using cow excrement. (Via Ria Novosti and the HuffPo)
If you’re planning a trip to Yolba anytime soon, don’t worry, they remove these poop statues – or shatues, if you will – in the spring because they use them for fertilizer and they probably smell awful. However, before we mock these people too much, I can only hope that they’re actually using this poop snake to train for the greatest sport ever imagined…
