Something doesn’t smell right in Prague, and I’m pretty sure it’s the buckets of elephant dung the local zoo has started selling to visitors, as souvenirs.

That’s right, the Czechs have apparently found a way to turn mounds of crap into piles of cash, by selling it in 1,5 kg plastic buckets, for 70 koruna ($4.20) each . The idea belongs to zoo director Miroslav Bobek, whose last name actually means ‘piece of dung’ in Czech, and believe it or not, it proved a big success. The stinky souvenirs were only introduced last month and sold just on weekends, but sales have been so brisk that management has decided to offer them to the public all week long. It’s estimated the zoo sells around 200 ice-cream-like dung containers every week, most of them to Czech gardeners who use it as fertilizer.

The Prague Zoo isn’t the first one who adopted the idea of using elephant dung as souvenirs, the Schoenbrunn Zoo, in Vienna, has been doing it for years, but if sales keep up, Bobek and his team are thinking of introducing other kinds of animal excrements, or special Asian and African mixes. Each of the zoo’s elephants produce between 140 and 180 kilograms of dung every day, so I don’t think they’ll run out of supplies any time soon.

via Prague Monitor and Neatorama