Easton Tolliver worked for this moment.
Before college, Tolliver scooped all sorts of animal poop on his family ranch in Ringling. Those years of training led to Saturday morning.
He earned a call up to the big show — OSU’s Sea of Orange Homecoming parade. For more than half a mile, thousands of spectators lined the sidewalks along South Main Street in Stillwater. The parade included fancy cars, politicians campaigning from the top of trailer beds, marching bands and lots of horses.
Oh…. And Horse poop. Someone needs to scoop it. That’s what Tolliver and Paul Oakes did while they trailed the Clydesdale horses. With a wide scoop shovel in one hand, and another pulling a large rolling trash can, the boys scooped. And scooped some more.
“It’s all in the wrists,” Tolliver said. “You just scoop that crap up. If it’s spread out a little bit, you do a little raking of the poop.”
The scoopers received praise from many spectators, including Reid Engelman.
“When I first them, I thought they lost a bet or something,” he said. “But everyone should be really thankful for them.”
Engelman said it would take that for him to scoop poop in a parade.
Fittingly, the Homecoming theme celebrated Cowboy heroes.
Enter the poop scoopers.
“How are the real heroes doing?” a spectator said.
It’s a dirty but necessary job.
I saw something that needed to be done and just decided to do it,” Oakes, a freshman from Guymon, said. “This is my college. It’s given me a whole lot. I want to give back in any way I can. If in my meager skillset I can scoop some poop, then so be it.”
At the end of the route, a crowd of flies hovered around the poop. Tolliver estimated they scooped at least 50 pounds of poop in more than half a mile.
“Large horses,” Tolliver said.
