Sculpin

It took the neighborhood squirrels a while to catch on, but by this morning they’d gotten the picture: pumpkins are good eats. After chasing squirrels away from the jack-o-lanterns and uncarved pumpkins all morning, I thought it might help to set the pumpkins up on the planks where they’d go later that evening. Maybe, I thought, being so exposed will slow down the squirrels and make them think twice. Hah. No. Not five minutes later, I heard a muffled thump; a squirrel had pushed over one of the jack-o-lanterns and had crawled inside to eat like a squashivorous king.

Clearly, on Halloween, what’s scary is the squirrels. (But, damn, so cute when they’re panicked and covered in pumpkin bits.) I brought the pumpkins inside. Only a little visible damage had been done to the one that had briefly housed a squirrel. The jack-o-lantern pictured above is meant as a testament to their Halloween scariness, but I don’t think I really captured the element of squirrelly menace.

We wound up with six jack-o-lanterns this year, only slightly gnawed here and there. My favorite is Josh’s tentacle lantern. Maybe next year we’ll leave one out for the squirrels, light what’s left of it when they’re done, and call it an abstract-o-lantern.

We had about 25 trick-or-treaters this year, despite the light rain. One of my favorites this year was a little kid, somewhere in the 3-5 year range, who turned back on his way down the front walk and struck a “ninja pose”. I saluted him.

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