Hoschton has plenty to (scare) crow about

This just in: When the clock struck midnight Monday in Hoschton, the little town with the big dream of erecting 4,000 scarecrows to become the scarecrow capital of the world, folks there had built …

Oh, let’s let entrepreneur and scarecrow fanatic Robbie Bettis take it from here.

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MARK DAVIS / mrdavis@ajc.com

Who is this puffy-faced guy? Chuck? Al? Whoever he is he has plenty of company. The city of Hoschton has erected about 4,800 scarecrows and should soon enter the record books as the scarecrow capital of the world.

• See the scarecrows!

• Hoschton scares up world record idea

“We exceeded our goal,” Bettis said Tuesday, just hours after the deadline passed for Hoschton to put up homemade mannequins designed to keep crows away.

Did Hoschton ever exceed its goal! According to preliminary counts, Hoschton had put up about 4,800 scarecrows. That’s just about one for every person in Hoschton’s 30548 ZIP code, the area eligible to show scarecrows.

They line Ga. 53, the main drag in the Jackson Count town. They pop up in subdivisions and turn unseeing eyes to people strolling downtown streets. They peep from under trees, over bushes, in front of stores, churches and homes. They are dressed like deer, football players, preachers, mamas and papas and babies, farmers, lawyers, businessmen, convicts and other shady individuals. They wear black tie and white socks, boots and sneakers and flip-flops that have flapped their last.

Tuesday morning, Bettis and others were going around town photographing and tagging the scarecrows, preparing an inventory to satisfy the Guinness World Records. If that organization certifies the count, Hoschton, population 1,700 or so, will upend Cincinnati as the place crows fear most.

In 2003, the Cincinnati Horticultural Society set a world scarecrow record. Its total: A measly 3,311 scarecrows.

Will Hoschton take away the Cincinnati society’s straw-filled crown? Bettis, who contacted the Guinness people earlier this year and got the approval to challenge the world record, wasn’t ready to declare victory.

“There will be some scarecrows they [Guinness] don’t like,” said Bettis. “It may be November until we know.”

City Clerk Kristen Smith was willing to, well, crow a little bit about the town’s accomplishment.

“It’s the coolest thing,” said Smith, who noted that people from all over built scarecrows in the past two weeks, bringing them to Hoschton.

Hoschton, she said, was a little town that said it could. “Could,” she said. “And did.”