Oregon Public Broadcasting

A “Peep Show” surprised one Hermiston woman when she returned home from church last Sunday to find the lawn of her home covered in thousands of Marshmallow Peeps, the shaped confection popular around holidays, in honor of her 50th birthday.

“As my birthday approached, we had fun celebrating, and then Sunday when I came home from church there were more than 3,000 peeps on bamboo skewers in my yard,” Kathy Moore said Tuesday. “It almost looked like a sea of daffodils, and you don’t see color in the winter. I was stunned. The first thing I thought when I saw them was, ‘Wow, that’s really pretty,’ then the second thing was, ‘Wow, they care enough to go to all that work.’”

Moore said her family planned the birthday surprise because of her aversion to Peeps and spent an hour frantically covering her lawn while she was at church.

“For years they have been buying up all the old Peeps after holidays and saving them,” she said, pointing out ghosts and stars in the midst of the Easter chicks. “It took my sister three days to open all the packages and put them on skewers.”

The display has also solidified one of Moore’s beliefs: Marshmallow Peeps are not edible.

“I have proof they aren’t really a food because wild animals have not been eating them and there isn’t a whole lot of food on the ground right now. We have birds and raccoons and different animals, and they haven’t been taking advantage of the situation,” she said.

Although this is the first time the family has included Peeps in their birthday celebration, in the past they have put 40 pictures of rabbits — “gray hares” — on stakes for a 40th birthday and 50 army men for another 50th celebration.

“It’s just something we do in my family,” Moore said. “When you have a birthday, something is going to happen.”

Read more on hermistonherald.com.