Rain Bird Gears Up For New Year’s Day

In Rain Bird’s sixth year as a participant in the New Year’s Day parade, the irrigation equipment manufacturer’s 2002 entry is named "Animal Ambassadors" and features wildlife, foliage and cascading waterfalls in an exotic botanical setting. The float, which measures 32 feet high, 18 feet wide and 55 feet long, features the common theme of Rain Bird’s previous entries: water conservation through the intelligent use of water.

Water will be prevalent on the float with six separate waterfalls moving close to 1,600 gallons of flowing and cascading water. The water alone weighs more than 13,000 pounds, requiring a strong chassis for the float.

The "Animal Ambassadors" float makes a test drive in Duarte, Calif.

PRODUCTION. Designed by float designer Raul Rodriguez, Rain Bird’s "Animal Ambassadors" float is being built by Fiesta Parade Floats, Duarte, Calif. As is common practice for the company, the float will then be decorated entirely by Rain Bird employees, families and friends.

The framework for the float was started in April, and in mid-July the in-progress float made a practice run through Duarte as one of several road tests required for floats before the parade. Construction will be finished in November. In mid-December, dried flowers will be attached to ready the float for the application of fresh flowers, which will be completed during the final week before the parade.

Hundreds of thousands of flowers will be applied by Rain Bird employee volunteers, including top-level management, and their families and friends during that week. The volunteers will spend more than 10,000 cumulative hours covering every inch of the float with flowers to create the realistic textures and coloration of the animals.

Float designer Raul Rodriguez's design of the "Animal Ambassadors" float.

DESIGN. The float’s tropical zoo setting will feature Bengal tigers with "fur" made of petals of gold strawflower and onion seed with accents of yarrow, pampas grass and cordon blossoms. Temple monkeys will be created using combed palm fiber and buckwheat seed. Cockatoos topping the float will have feathers created from white carnation and gladiola petals.

Sculptured rock formations and garden beds will feature purple dendrobium and white cattleya orchids with Neon, Pavarotti and Ravel hot pink roses. Rainbow Obake and Midori anthuriums, cypripedium and hybrid vanda orchids, Kimi, Curcuma and Torch ginger, bird of paradise, Angusta, Bihia and Pagoda heliconia, and other tropical foliages and ferns will make up tropical gardens on the float.

Hydraulics were used to create realistic movements of the tigers, monkeys and cockatoos, and an on-board audio system will broadcast these and other wild animal sounds.

Workers form framework construction of Rain Bird's float.

RIDERS. Depicting a zoo theme, the float will appropriately feature two well-known wildlife experts - Jack Hanna and Walter Crawford.

Hanna is director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium, Columbus, Ohio. He may be better known as host of Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures, a nationally syndicated program about animals and their habitats, and as a frequent guest on "Good Morning America," "Larry King Live" and "The Late Show With David Letterman."

Crawford is the founder and director of the World Bird Sanctuary. Crawford started the St. Louis, Mo., sanctuary - then known as the Raptor Rehabilitation and Research Project - in 1977 with five birds. Today, his organization combines rehabilitation, education, breeding and field research for more than 500 eagles, vultures, owls and hawks.

HONORS. Rain Bird has previously won the Tournament of Roses Parade Sweepstakes Trophy for the most beautiful entry in the parade in 2001, 1999 and 1998. The company also won the President's Trophy in 2000 for the most effective use and presentation of flowers, and the Directors' Trophy in 1997 for outstanding artistic merit in design and floral presentation.