Halloween 2020

We tried decorating the house, but the orange lights sparked and tried to electrocute us, and the cats ate the novelty spider webs. I know this because after disentangling two of them from the windows, they left the litter box trailing threads from their butts like the very worst kinds of spiders. Artificial webbing has officially been added to the banned decorations list, right under tinsel - and for the same reason. *

Nobody knew what was happening. The mayor didn’t cancel Halloween, but trick or treating was officially discouraged, so we arrived at my mother’s house with pie and jack o’ lantern, ready for a family dinner and spooky movie but half expecting hordes of candy-goers anyway. The neighborhood was dark and all the families with children were missing. 

My mother made a plague-safe candy delivery system out of a broom handle with a skeletal hand in a rubber glove wired to the end, and used it only three times throughout the evening to drop candy into optimistic buckets. “I’m a panda, but my costume was too hot,” said a teenager with black and white fur bunched around his waist, “So now I’m a skinned panda.” He got extra Milky Ways.

While we were watching the House with a Clock in its Walls, the next door neighbor called the fire department on our pumpkin. The fire truck pulled up, some tired-looking firemen climbed out, determined that the pumpkins were lit with batteries, asked if she was feeling okay, and then left. HA.

CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT 

The normally three-Costco-bags-of-candy neighborhood, eerily empty

Jello brains and the traditional Cat Foot Pie (pie that a cat has stepped in while we had our backs turned. That piece goes to the chickens.)

We were relieved the neighborhood played it safe, and a bit unnerved by the empty roads and dark windows. It added extra spoopiness to a strange year.

*No cats have been harmed - all decorations have been successfully pooped out with no bowel injury, and kids have been taught why it's not safe to pull on anything dangling out of an animal's bum.