Animal Rights Activists

     Protest Spring Festival

Keokuk: A longtime Spring Festival held annually in Lancaster may be permanently closed down if Animal Rights Movement (ARM) leaders have their way. Festival co-ordinators are seeking to protect the event with an appeal to the American Civil Liberties Union on grounds of religious freedoms.

     The controversy surrounds the observance of the coming of spring by the slaughter of a ritual boar. The boars are raised by local children who see to its every need until it is of market age. Rather than send the boar to a meat plant, the children paint intricate geometric patterns on the swine with green food dyes. Then the High Priest of the town's major religion, Minahassanism, moves forward in ceremonial garb and kills the boar with an ornate curved dagger reputed to have mystical powers. Once the boar is cut open, the priest steps back several paces and rushes furiously at it, thrusting his head into the carcass and drinking of the blood while the animal, still alive, squeals horribly. When the pig is dead, the priest removes his head and is dragged away by force and set on a throne made of oak in the center of the town, whereupon he begins to prophesy how the agricultural crops will perform in the coming year, who will marry whom, and other matters of import. Each member of the community is allowed to pass in front of the High Priest and ask a single question.

     Every so often, as though to recharge his prophetic powers, he leaps from the chair and runs at the carcass. He again thrusts his head into it and drinks of the blood. A similar practice is done in neighboring Orrville by Hindoo Koosh practitioners, but involving the sucking of blood from the neck of a decapitated goat.

     ARM learned of the ritual practices when a resident of Lancaster sent in a tape of the event to "America's Funniest Religious Videos".