“Number eleven!” a voice cries out. “Please, number fifty-seven!” comes another.
A cheering, cajoling mass is gathered around a wire cage, clutching their tickets, sending up prayers, and carefully eyeing the space for a certain tell-tale sign. Tonight, Kitty Wells and Emmylou Harris—wings akimbo and beaks bowed—will be the ones to decide the victors. While they’re merely interested in pecking feed, the onlookers are here for one thing and one thing only.
“Wherever the poop hits the board, that’s going to be our winner,” Terry Gaona, the saloon’s owner, explains. It’s as simple as that.
Over the last few decades, the Little Longhorn Saloon in Austin, Texas, has become known the world over for more than just its ice-cold Lone Stars and nightly live music. The establishment is the original home of Chicken Sh*t Bingo, a game that involves poultry set loose in a large pen, the floor of which consists of a grid-like platform marked with numbers. As the chickens poke around the board, munching meal as they go, it’s only a matter of time before, well, you know.
The weekly game was already a well-established tradition when Terry and her husband, David, took over ownership of the honky tonk in 2013. The bar’s previous owners, Don and Ginny Kalmbach, were the ones to start the offbeat gamble. As Terry tells it: “Back when Ginny and Don owned the bar, Don sprung it on Ginny and said, ‘We’re going to do this chicken bingo.’ And she said, ‘Ah, this sh*t’s never gonna last.’ Well, here it is.”
Terry and David have since expanded the game, welcoming more players and providing more opportunities to win. Today, a single Sunday could feature anywhere from four to eight rounds and yield dozens of winners.
Two-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar tickets are sold, with each round corresponding to the ticket tiers. The money collected goes into the respective pots for the winnings. “All the numbers on the tickets match all the numbers on the board,” Terry explains, “so once we sell a set of tickets, a two-dollar ticket will yield a $114 win. A five-dollar ticket yields a $285 win, and then when we do a ten-dollar ticket, it’s a $570 win.”
Terry describes the local custom as “fun chaos,” adding, “It’s community, it’s camaraderie, and it can be a little competitive because everybody wants to win.”
But while players may not all leave with pockets a little fatter, they all depart a little richer, having experienced a little piece of what makes Austin one of a kind.
