Holiday Macabre

Wishing You a Most Cheerful Halloween

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet…

Are you stumped over how to dress your animal companion this Halloween? Why not try the partnership approach shown in these photos?

[Photos from Halloween Horse.]

BOOKreMARKS: Get Rabid for Halloween

Looking for something spooky to read this month? Try Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus.

If you’d told me last year that I’d enjoy reading 200+ pages about rabies, I would have politely corrected you. Yet that’s exactly what happened a few months ago when I devoured the collaboration between Bill Wasik, a writer for Wired.com, and Monica Murphy, a veterinarian (and married to Mr. Wasik). It’s a romp through history, ever focusing on the disease and its victims, its symptoms, and its treatments—all the while weaving cultural and historical perspectives into the story. Werewolves, vampires, and zombies figure into the picture, too.

After speaking with an animal control officer earlier this year about rabies, I suspected her department acted more on myths and assumptions than on facts (long story involving a sweet fox). I promised myself I’d research the topic, but procrastinated. Then Rabid caught my attention at the library and I thought it might shed some light on the issue.

It didn’t answer my specific questions, yet the book offered so much more. It made me realize how much Louis Pasteur contributed to the world, how important rabies vaccinations are for pets, how rabies research helped scientists understand how to breach the blood-brain barrier, how and why dogs are perceived so differently in countries beyond U.S. borders, how rabies figured into literature and laws. With so much context, even zombies started making sense.

If you’re craving a little gore and horror to get you in the holiday spirit, read Rabid. It won’t disappoint.

Deck the Halls with … Pumpkins?

I realize Christmas is just around the corner. Retailer music has been reminding me since October. But the tall, strangely narrow pumpkins that grace my window ledges still look so great that I don’t have the heart to remove them.

I paid WAY too much for the pumpkins, and the woman selling them knew it. Then she warmed to me and started telling me about her life.

She raised her daughters the “Country Way”—that is, to be self-sufficient without electricity, plumbing, and running water. When she married, she told her husband she’d do anything for him except cook chicken. She’d had enough of it, for it was her job at the tender age of 6 to kill three chickens every morning. Her uncle—who, with his wife, raised her and her many older brothers—loved to eat chicken. It was served every day for breakfast and supper; the children were spared chicken for lunch because they ate at school.

From this point, the tale turned dark and uncomfortable as it focused on the wrath and unsavory desires of the uncle. While the woman shared the grim details of her hardscrabble upbringing, she insisted on cleaning my pumpkins in bleach water—“They’ll last longer.”

She was right. Those pumpkins look as shiny new and orange as they did the day I bought them. And really, with the woman’s storytelling thrown in, I got a bargain.

Even so, I’ve grown accustomed to their Stan Laurel–like visages outside my windows. I’m thinking a couple of Santa hats atop them could help their transition to the next holiday.

Preparing for the Big Night

Halloween: Bringing Humiliation to Pets Every Year

We’ve all seen those over-the-top adorable pics of dogs and cats dressed for Halloween: devils, pirates, bunnies, hot dogs, Medusas, transformers—you name the costume, some poor creature has had to wear it and pose for a pic.

But how many horses have you seen decked out for the occasion? These pics are from the Facebook page of the American Quarter Horse Association. (I’m especially fond of the piñata.)

Who or what will your pet be this year?

May the Spirits Be with You

Theme in Yellow
by Carl Sandburg

I SPOT the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

[For more Halloween poetry, visit the Poetry Foundation.]

Ripples from an Egg-straordinary Conversation

he pooch and I headed out for our usual stroll the other morning, but suddenly the sidewalk morphed into a slalom. Every few feet we had to dodge the splatter of a raw egg.

Strange. I expected to see smashed eggs and pumpkins the day after Halloween—not several days afterward.

I smiled. Memories stirred of the bus ride I’d taken the afternoon before Halloween. I was traveling downtown to make my COBRA payment and visit with a few former colleagues. It was pouring rain so I took the first bus that stopped. Unfortunately, it was the least desirable route: seven miles of stop-and-go at every other corner.

Halfway through, as I was wondering whether I would fall asleep or heave first, a man sat next to me. Then he asked if it was okay to sit next to me, but he didn’t wait for my reply. He kept talking.

He’d been seated a few rows ahead of me earlier, until he had to move to let the person next to him exit the bus. I had sensed some discomfort of the people around him. Some distrust. So I braced myself for whatever was about to unfold.

The man seemed young but looked old. He was thin, not tall, well equipped for the rain with umbrella, raincoat, and hat. He talked incessantly.

This, I think, was the source of discomfort for others. He spoke as if word spaces didn’t exist. He quietly mumbled most of what he said and periodically enunciated some phrases at normal volume. His phrases came out in question form.

He was seeking conversation, or connection, and I did my best to oblige. He wanted to know why I didn’t have an umbrella or rain hat, whether children came trick-or-treating to my door, if I would be going to a Halloween party and what people did at those parties (he’d never been to one), but over and over again he wanted to know why people threw eggs on Halloween.

He stumped me there. I never did it myself, never saw a reason for doing it.

We continued chatting until the bus arrived at my stop. I wondered if anyone would take my place as his conversation partner.

In the Before Time, when I had a job, I usually had a bus story to tell my work family. Now that my work family has been disbanded, I told my tiny tale to my former boss. I said I didn’t know why encounters like that didn’t bother me yet I can get tongue-tied in every other human exchange. (I was worried there was some kind of hidden superiority-inferiority element to it and I would soon have to confront the revelation that I’m a jerk with confidence issues.)

My boss surprised me with a quick answer to my question: “Lill, love,” he said, “innocence. You talk to people like that because they exude innocence.”

I’ve thought more about this since then, and especially after seeing the smashed eggs on the sidewalk. I might have an answer for that fellow bus-rider about why people smash eggs.

It’s a display of power. There’s a certain thrill for some people to destroy a fragile thing. It provides immediate gratification and, because it’s so easy to do, it can be done well. Houses of cards, sandcastles, small animals, children, people who are “other”—all are at the mercy of those seeking power. And since Halloween is admittedly a night of mischief, these thrill-seekers get a free pass for one night.

This is also the answer to my question about why that bus conversation didn’t bother me. When I encounter a fragile thing, my immediate reaction is to protect it. Help it. Engage it.

The world is made up of two kinds of people: the powerful, and the fragile. And I am neither.

About Last Night . . .

I didn't get to tell all my ghost stories yesterday, and now it seems a little inappropriate. My roadblock was . . . well, I'm not certain. But the bottom line was I had no Internet access. Don't know why but it sure was irritating.

Today seems a world away from the Halloween festivities of yesterday. The weather has taken a turn for the better—sunshine, no wind—and between last night's fireworks display (is that a new Halloween tradition I knew nothing about?) and the time change, I feel like today marks an entirely new year.

But I know better. Judging from the holiday displays retailers rolled out last week, I know we still have to get through Christmas before we can say Goodbye to this wretched year. I plan to welcome 2010 in a BIG way—employed or not; or, at least, I'm going to make a BIG deal of putting 2009 in the past.

Spirit Tales from a Rational Mind, Part I

Inside, Looking Out

One Autumn evening in my Minneapolis apartment, a domino-like sequence of thuds startled me from the silence I was enjoying. The disturbance emanated from my hall closet and I assumed InstaPurr was to blame.

InstaPurr was my tiny, fearless feline who stopped at nothing to get what she wanted. She opened doors by balancing atop the doorknobs and working them with her paws—much as a logroller does with timber in a river. I headed toward the closet, expecting that upon entering it, I’d find InstaPurr jumping off a shelf or hanging onto a coat.

But before I reached the door, Purr was at my side. I stepped into the walk-in closet to find all the books and records lining its shelves in disarray. Some had fallen in place; others had fallen to the floor. I reorganized them, apologized to Purr for making assumptions, and chalked up the matter to . . . weirdness, I guess.

Days later, as I crossed the living room, several newspapers from a stack on the floor swirled and fluttered, as if I’d just turned a powerful fan on them. Yet, there was no draft, no open windows, no working fan or air conditioner—and Purr could hardly be blamed for such a show. I chalked it up to . . . nothing. There was no explanation for it.

Several days on, I came home from work to find five noticeable “ripples” down the wall between the dining room and the galley kitchen. The marks looked like someone was pushing a hand through the painted wallpaper—from the inside of the wall outward.

Now I was nervous.

I asked the apartment manager about the building’s history. She said it had been a grand residential hotel in the ’20s, but a terrible fire nearly destroyed it.

Aha! I was living with a former tenant who was still trying to escape a gruesome and untimely death. I wanted to help my ghost, but didn’t figure out how before I moved to Chicago with my future husband.

It was my first encounter with uneasy spirits. Yet it wouldn’t be my last.

More Spirit Tales to come . . .

Get Your Ghoul On

It's here at last: that glorious day of the year reserved for us to be whatever we're not or whatever we secretly are or wish to be. I don't have a costume today, but I do have some tales to tell. I'll get them to you bit by bit.

You Say "To-mah-to" and I Say "To-may-to"

Last night, much like every night this past month, it rained. Drizzled, really. Enough that I put a coat on the pooch before I took her for her last walk before bedtime.

Though my husband might disagree, I assure you I am not one of those crazy women who dress up their dogs. I put a raincoat on the canine for two reasons: 1) She hates the rain; and (more important) 2) I hate the way she smells when she's wet. We both win when she wears a coat.

As we turned into the last leg of our walk, a neighbor we often see came toward us. No matter the season, this particular neighbor always remarks that the pooch wears a built-in mask (referring to her brown head)—"She's ready for Halloween!" he exclaims. With Halloween rapidly approaching, I took a deep breath in preparation for the banter I knew was about to start.

Except it didn't. Instead, the man chided me for not putting the pooch in boots. "She needs some galoshes," he said.

Only he pronounced galoshes "ghoul-oshes"—emphasis on the first syllable. I smiled at his joke and before I could respond, he pressed: "You know, she could get sick if she doesn't wear any ghoul-oshes."

Hmmm. It wasn't cleverness I was hearing after all. Merely a mispronunciation enveloped in concern. I assured him that once snow hit us, I'd have the pooch in boots.

A Pre-Halloween Visitor Comes A-Calling

Our downstairs neighbor asked for our help yesterday. A bat was clinging to the inside of her back screen door and hissed at her whenever she tried to open it.

Sounded like a rescue mission to me; my neighbor obviously saw it as pest eradication.

When I was a kid, bats came to our yard like clockwork every evening. We had a swimming pool and lots of trees, which meant we attracted a lot of mosquitoes and other great flying appetizers that bats crave. As the bats' choreographed hunt unfolded in the air, a keen eye could observe the iridescent threads of color in their wings. My favorite moment with the bats of my childhood was when one swooped toward me, hit my hand, and swooped away. It was the closest I'd gotten to a bat until about 13 years ago.

At the time, we had three cats. The eldest had been known to catch bats as gifts for my husband-to-be, but those years of agility were long past her. Any hunting prowess was left to the younger cats, whose idea of hunting went something like this:

1) Notice a scary thing (bug, mouse, bird, bat).

2) Run to a person and get their attention (mew, cry, paw at them, herd them).

3) Lead them to the scary thing (this may take a lot of running back and forth between the person and the scary thing to get the point across).

4) Laud it over the scary thing that it's about to become history.

One night, the younger cats initiated the hunting routine. Turns out a tiny baby bat was clinging to our decorative fireplace. So we sequestered the felines in a bedroom and my husband-to-be rigged a blanket tunnel and lighting system from the front of our apartment out to the open back door. The baby flew away, the cats checked to make sure it was "history," and our little world shifted back into place.

Yesterday's operation promised to be simpler. The bat was already outside. We just needed to encourage it to rest elsewhere.

Of course, I've met with enough of life's challenges to know that nothing is ever simple. At least, I SHOULD have known.

I tried to get the bat to hop onto my broom. (I know: Halloween symbolism everywhere.) Nothing doing. Then I tapped the screen with the broom, hoping to rouse him (or her—I've no idea). I did, but not to budge; only to hiss.

Then my husband joined me. He handled the broom duties while I held the door open. After much nudging and coaxing on our part, and hissing, chattering, buzzing, and clucking on the bat's part, it fell to the ground—on its back. Every time my husband righted it, it did a backward somersault and flopped onto its back, wings spread wide, and its tiny mouth opening and closing like a baby bird waiting for chow. I wanted to cry.

I went back into our apartment to find a box. My husband slid the bat inside and then we disagreed about where to put it.

Our neighbor asked, "You're going to put it in the Dumpster, aren't you?"

"No," I cried. "I'm not sure where we'll put him, but it most assuredly won't be in the trash."

I wanted to take the bat to the park, but my husband worried that the bat could meet some unknown trauma there. So the box was placed in our gangway, with an opening for the bat to escape once it recovered.

And it did. Happy ending.

Our neighbor is moving out of the building after living here for some 20 years. She bought a house because "living here isn't the same now that Mr. Sandin is gone."

She's right. Our previous landlord lived in the building, too, and made it clear that we were like family to him. A bad heart took him early from the Earth and our sense of community has never recovered.

But it occurred to me this morning that as Mr. Sandin's birthday approaches (Halloween), and as my neighbor prepares to move, perhaps our little winged visitor was Mr. Sandin incarnate—reminding us to keep his memory alive wherever life leads us from here.

It's the story I'm sticking with. But don't worry, Mr. Sandin. As much as I enjoyed yesterday's bat escapade, I don't need a reminder to think about you. You're always in my heart.