COUNCIL, Idaho — From parades and barbeques to fireworks and concerts, there many traditional ways families across the country - and throughout Idaho - celebrate on the Fourth of July.
There is one event though in Western Idaho that is completely unique, and pretty prickly. People in the small town of Council come to the football field for the can’t-miss porcupine races.
“No one else does this kind of stuff so might as well just go out and do it,” Caleb Corse said. He is one of the contestants this year.
It’s an annual tradition in Council that goes back about 50 years, and it’s unlike any other.
“I just do it for the people," Contestant Brett Rosengrant said. "A lot of people come and watch it, so have to put on a good show for them."
The field this year had five two-person teams.
“Porcupines are like the biggest excitement, it gathers people around,” Brittany Shon said, another contestant in the race.
Shon and her teammate, Josh Gipe were racing for a special reason for their first year. Each one of them were wearing a t-shirt with the message “We Got This AJ.”
“I was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer two years back,” Shon said. “[AJ] was my make a wish foundation, and while I was on my wish he was diagnosed with colon cancer. So, we’re doing this for him.”
It is a Fourth of July event filled that is filled with quills, brooms, and trashcans. It starts with catching the porcupines the night before.
“You go out and run into the hay fields and take a trash can and put it over it,” Gipe said.
The teams even name their porcupines even - take Zayn and Shayd Crossley, who are competing for the first time. They named their porcupine ‘Trouble.’
“They’re not good because they can quill you so they’re trouble,” Zayn said.
The teams bring the rodents to the football field to let the games begin. The porcupines are auctioned off to the crowd, and the money goes back to the community.
“These small towns really come together to support their communities, it’s a lot of fun,” Auctioneer Roger Nakashima said.
Nakashima grew up in Idaho but told KTVB he had never been to a porcupine race.
“I had heard of the porcupine races, but I had never been here before,” he said. “So, I thought well that’s an adventure, might as well go and do it.”
When it’s time for the races to start, they break it up into separate heats. This year’s pool of contestants was smaller than normal. The first heat had three teams, and the second heat had the remaining two. The top two teams from each heat went onto the championship round.
The teams try to come up with the best strategy to get their porcupine moving towards the finish line.
“You try to get it to run with the trashcan, and the broom kind of steers it a little bit,” Rosengrant said.
It’s anyone guess how the porcupine will react when the trash cans are lifted.
“Depending on what it does when you let it out of the trash can,” Taylor Corse said. “You never know what that thing is going to do.”
Corse has now won the porcupine races three years in a row. A feat he says hasn’t been done by many others. In the championship round, he got off to a slow start, but things turned around quickly for the now three-time champ.
"It was nerve-wracking, he wouldn’t move and then he just took off. It was kind of scary,” he said.
His teammate this year was his girlfriend, Taylor Green, who competed in the race for the very first time.
"It was good, I was so scared," she said.
While some porcupines take off, others need a little tender love and care to cooperate.
“You could try to coax it or do whatever you can,” said Caleb Corse, the champion’s brother.
No matter the outcome, the crowd really gets into it. Filling the high school football field with cheers normally reserved for Friday nights in the fall.
“It was everything I thought,” Nakashima said. “And I think next year they are going to have a lot more porcupines.”
Now that the races are over, the contestants will be releasing the porcupines back into the area where they originally caught them.
“You release it where you catch it so its back in its own habitat,” Shon said. “No porcupines were harmed.”
The organizer of the race said this was a down year in terms of participants because people simply couldn’t catch the prickly critters this year.