Plunge into spinach icky way to raise green> Creative hospital fund-raiser invites participants to dive in on a search for submerged goodies

CALAIS — Her search for this year’s prize plunge began at the sewage treatment plant and ended in a spinach bed. Kathryn Colson Day, public relations director for Calais Regional Hospital, rediscovered those juicy leaves that threw Popeye the Sailor Man into a feeding frenzy and made them the vegetable of choice for the hospital’s annual fund-raiser.

“I was just looking for something that had a yuck factor,” said Day as she explained why she had selected spinach.

Known this year as the “Spinach Splash,” contestants will end up with spinach up their nose and between their toes as they dive for marbles and small sand bags that will win them prizes. The event will be held Saturday at Pike’s Park, immediately after the International Parade.

“I considered broccoli and could have called it the “Bush bash,” Day said referring to the former president’s distaste for broccoli. “But then I settled on spinach.”

The spinach will be mixed with water and dumped into tubs. Large for adults, medium for teen-agers and small for youngsters. “There is 598 pounds of frozen chopped and 60 pounds of fresh spinach,” Day said of the vegetable mush that will be placed inside the three tubs.

“The frozen chopped goes in with water, and the fresh is floated on top, for garnish. We must make it aesthetically appealing,” she said.

Each year, the hospital has held some kind of plunge at its annual fund-raiser. This year, the money will be used to purchase equipment for the orthopedic department.

In years past, divers dove into a tub of gelatin for their prizes, but the dietary preferences of a colony of bacteria have had an international impact.

“I came up with the idea of spinach because the city’s waste management department would not let us dispose of gelatin in its plant any more. It seems the bacteria at the plant preferred to eat the gelatin and didn’t want to eat the other stuff. Hey, if I were bacteria at a waste management plant, gelatin would sound pretty good to me,” she said.

To participate, divers must solicit pledges, but Day said late entries could participate if they made a donation. She said the size of the donation would depend on the age of the diver and the size of the tub.

Prizes in the Spinach Splash also will depend on the size of the tub and include bikes for kids, $250 and $500 cash prizes and a trip for two to Florida.