The courir de Mardi Gras — literally, the Fat Tuesday Run — is a rural Cajun tradition where disguised revelers convene before dawn, form a costumed band, and travel by horseback or tractor-drawn trailer through the countryside, calling on neighbors and performing comic antics in exchange for a chicken, rice, and sausage — all ingredients for a communal gumbo served that evening. The tradition arrived with the Acadian exiles from the fête de la quémande, a medieval French custom of socially acceptable house-to-house begging that traces to pre-Christian Brittany. The fowl are donated alive, requiring revelers to chase and catch them — a scene that is genuinely medieval and genuinely joyful. Runs happen in Mamou, Church Point, Eunice, Tee Mamou, and dozens of communities across the Cajun Prairie; the Faquetaique Courir near Lafayette is participatory. Every run ends the same way: a communal gumbo, cooked from everything the community gave.