NORWAY – An audience of penned Angus and belted Galloway cows stared out on Saturday through slots between faded gray boards at a small group of people laughing nearby.

Riding blue plastic saucers one at a time, two families slowly hurled themselves down a packed-snow lane on a hillside, taking aim on empty plastic gallon water jugs arranged in triangle formation 102 feet away.

The Western Foothills Land Trust event was Wacky Human Bowling. It was part of the trust’s 16th annual X-C Ski event at the Bob and Mary Van Nest farm at 265 Old Stage Road in Norway.

“That was fun!” said “bowling ball” Jill Gabrielsen, a pediatrician with Western Maine Health Pediatrics in Norway, one of a small group of children and adults who had shown up for the event by early afternoon.

Adding to the surreal winter scene were a concert of chickadee calls punctuated by a crowing rooster, wild-turkey gobbling, baying dogs in the distance, and a group of snowmobiles roaring by on a nearby trail. The cows never uttered a sound, though.

Human bowling is big out West, said Lee Dassler of Otisfield, coordinator for the trust program. That’s why, when Aranka Matolcsy, president of the Western Maine Art Group in Norway, suggested she try it, Dassler Googled it on the Internet. Finding, and watching, several YouTube videos highlighting the sport, Dassler decided the trust just had to try it.

“It sounded like something fun to do,” she said. “This year is just for fun … Next year, we’ll get really professional with it.”

David Kyle of Norway doubled as both a team pusher and bowling ball.

“It looks silly at first, but then I felt a competitive urge to cheat like some people,” Kyle said after the 30-minute game between a team of adults and a team of their children.

Due to the lack of slope, the human projectiles couldn’t build up enough speed after being pushed by teammates to the start of the lane. So those who didn’t spill, resorted to pushing themselves along with gloved hands.

It only took a few runs before Ava Gabrielsen, 10, and Will Kyle, 11, both of Norway, figured out they could topple more pins by riding the saucers on their bellies, arms outstretched.

There weren’t any strikes, a surprising fact considering the size of the bowling balls. “It’s kind of hard because the hill is slanting that way,” Ava Gabrielsen said, pointing to the left of the pins.

“I liked just knocking down all the pins,” Will Kyle said.

“Both these kids are into the sport – human projectiles letting their body be part of the targeting,” David Kyle said.

“It was fun, and the kids really got a kick out of it,” Jill Gabrielsen added.

After the game, Dassler declared everyone winners. Enticing others to whistle the Olympics’ theme song, she awarded bags of birdseed and two generic multilingual bird call devices to the children, who promptly set to work with them and called in a gang of inquisitive chickadees.

“I think the bar has been set, and certainly can be raised next year. Next year, we’ll have bigger pins, better saucers and a steeper slope,” Dassler said.

The annual Nordic ski event was a fundraiser toward the trust’s purchase of the 150-acre Roberts Farm Preserve, Norway’s former tech park site.