Watching paint dry is boring.  Watching ice melt is exciting!  At least at Joe’s Pond in West Danville where they don’t actually watch the ice melt, they bet on when it will melt.  Jules Chatot, who was the president of the Joe’s Pond Association back in 1988 took a guessing game among friends to the next level by starting a contest that has grown to having 9000 participants from around the world.  The ‘unofficial” web site of the Joe’s Pond Association explains how Jules and his friends started the contest – “They placed an old electric clock (now estimated to be at least 40 years old) on Homer and Elsie Fitts’ deck, tethered it to a cinder block wired to a wooden pallet placed 50 feet or more out on the ice just off the fishing access by the Fitts’ camp, and there it was—the perfect solution to inevitable arguments about when the ice was actually out of all the nooks and crannies and coves of the pond. When the block went down, the clock stopped, and that was it—the “official” ice-out time. Whoever guessed closest to the date and time the clock stopped won the contest.” You can buy tickets for this contest until April 1st.  This is spring time excitement in Vermont!