In Maine this summer, for a limited time only, you can see the original World’s Largest Frying Pan, the inventor of the pink plastic flamingo autographing pink plastic flamingos, and pirates, surly and boisterous, by the hundreds.

It’s festival time.

The weirder the better.

Three miss-at-your-own-peril events over the next three months.

Harbor House Flamingo Festival

Southwest Harbor, July 9-12

For one weekend on the coast — this weekend — it’s all about the leggy icon.

“It’s really unique,” said Karli Griffin of Harbor House community center. “It’s probably the pinkest festival in Maine. I’m going to be so bold as to say that.”

For about 12 years running, the Flamingo Festival has been one of the center’s three big fundraisers. People in town deck out their gardens, their lawns and themselves. They turn out in droves for the parade (this year’s theme: United Feathers of Flamingo; last year’s: Cirque du Flamingo.)

There’s a golf tournament, craft fair, farmers market, pancake breakfast — new this year, pink pancakes — and a kids’ carnival. One of the annual highlights: A visit from the father of the pink plastic flamingo, Don Featherstone. He worked at Union Products when he designed that lawn ornament more than 50 years ago.

He and his wife, Nancy, make the trip up from Massachusetts, Griffin said.

“They sign flamingos and T-shirts all day long; they love it,” she said. Thanks to Nancy, the couple is easy to spot: 365 days a year, they wear matching outfits.

In a sporting mood? Check out the annual Flamingo Croquet tournament, Southwest Harbor selectmen vs. Tremont selectmen.

Central Maine Egg Festival

Pittsfield, July 20-24

It used to reign large.

Very large.

Five feet across, 300 pounds, outfitted with special burners and jets, the first World’s Largest Frying Pan could cook dozens of eggs at a time back in 1973.

Years later, something bigger came along to oust it from its roost. Years after that, the Maine pan cracked. Today, it’s still a star attraction, just with a little less sizzle.

President Deb Billings said Alcoa Aluminum made the frying pan special for the inaugural Central Maine Egg Festival, with Teflon coating by DuPont.

“It toured the country, but every year at festival time it was here,” Billings said. After a bit, the pan called Pittsfield home full time.

The festival was born as a celebration of local egg farms. It’s grown into a broader, though very egg-themed, event, with a parade, petting zoo, firemen’s muster and Egg-lympics for the kids, complete with a rubber chicken throw, eggball elimination and the Great American Squirt Gun Competition.

It attracts between 15,000 and 20,000 people each year, Billings said. Events kick off Tuesday with an art show, and there’s nightly entertainment. Saturday, in Manson Park, is the big day.

Food, not surprisingly, plays a big part. Vendors offer fair-style food, and there’s a quiche (eggs) and cheesecake (more eggs!) contest.

“We have a group thinking about selling pickled eggs. I don’t have that confirmed,” Billings said.

As for that world’s largest title? Maybe the competition isn’t over just yet.

Eastport Pirate Festival

Eastport, Sept. 10-12

To get good and ready for its own festival, Eastport invades Lubec the weekend before. Last year, some 500 to 600 people made the 1-mile trip by boat and the scalawags took over two bars in Lubec.

“This year, they have their committee organizing their own resistance,”co-organizer Chris Brown said. “Campobello’s involved. They want to make it an international (incident). Of course, it’s all in fun, between water balloons and marshmallow guns.”

And that is just a taste of the Eastport Pirate Festival.

Launched five years ago to give the Salmon Festival a boost, it’s proven popular enough to stand on its own peg legs. Brown, festival treasurer and one of the founders and organizers, said his town has a history steeped in real pirates and lots of mid-1800s buildings for a Victorian feel.

“We’re kind of a perfect setting for a different era,” he said.

While a schedule is still being hammered out, highlights last year included the Pirates Bed Race, Pirates Ball, costume contests aplenty and a visit from the Central Maine Precision Lawn Chair Drill Team.

The professional troupe Pirates of the Dark Rose out of Rockland have already been lined up.

“That helps crank it up,” Brown said. “Of course they talk, everything’s pirate with them, and they get in fights with each other.”

Expect cannon and cutlass demos, too. The group, with pirates named Black Bess and Dead Tom Redlegs, works festivals all the way down to Key West, Fla.

Eager to lose landlubber status and take to the seas? Consider entering the Lobster Trap Crate Race, a sprint across a row of floating lobster traps strung together in the water. Contestants try to reach a platform on the end.

“Of course, it doesn’t really happen, but everyone gets wet and has lots of fun,” Brown said.

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, intriguing and unexplained in Maine. Send photos, ideas and mutant cheesecake to kskelton@sunjournal.com.

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