Balloons Are Up. Dead To Follow

Our Hallowe'en decorations are finally up.

Almost.

The balloons are emplaced and, except for the ones over on the far side of the driveway (which include the headless horseman and the hearse), inflated. We have a couple of new ones including a large orange and black spider with glowing swirly lights in its abdomen. Neighbor Dan has a similar one but its abdomen is white and the swirly lights are multi-colored. I like ours better.

Neighbor Dan has had his decorations up since the first week of October. My brother intended to put ours up shortly after he saw Neighbor Dan's yard but his truck broke (again) that weekend so he couldn't retrieve anything from storage and then his truck was stolen so he mowed the lawn instead which was necessary but insufficient as this is the time of year when the grass shoots up about a foot over night and sets its seeds. Its all getting a bit raggedy already. He finally got around to placing balloons a few days ago.

Our yard still looks sparse compared to Neighbor Dan's but that's mostly because a lot of our decorations are not inflatables: the zombie wedding party, tombstones, dancing skeletons, etc. that really shouldn't be put out too far in advance although there's hardly any chance of rain anymore. Even the TV weather people have officially announced the end of Rainy Season. The days have been glorious, warm and sunny; the nights clear, cool and dry.

We have a couple new zombies, too. Actually, three, I think, plus the dog skeleton. They're the top-half-of-the-body-bursting-through-the-ground type zombies and will go well with the tombstones. One of them arrived broken and when my brother called the company they said they'd received a number of complaints about that one and they would refund his money and he could just go ahead and keep it anyway. That's the way to ensure customer loyalty. The skeleton dog is poseable and is currently leashed to the picket fence along the walkway to our front door. I don't understand how a skeleton can have ears and a nose, but otherwise he's kinda cute.

People have been driving by to check out the neighborhood prior to the pillaging spree this Friday. They seem to be impressed, if they are new to the area, or, if not, satisfied the tradition continues.

Oh, and I voted for the fourth time this year, not that it'll do any good in this district. Maybe in the statewide races.

The Night In Question

(The Wedding Party)

So, it turns out twenty (20!) bags of candy weren't enough, after all, and we needed to borrow one from Neighbor Dan who only bought 9 bags but his were three times the size of ours so it balanced out pretty evenly in the end.

Despite the last-minute nature of our decorating due to my brother's bout of the plague followed by his trip to the Bahamas and delayed return from spending an extra day with his girlfriend, we looked pretty good. A little sparse compared to previous years, but the trick-or-treaters didn't seem to notice.

(A Wedding Crasher)

The wedding party went over nicely. Several people even crashed it to have their pictures taken with the bride. Later in the evening, my brother joined them and sat very quietly until unsuspecting visitors came up close enough to collect their treats.

(Spot the Living Guest)

Reactions ranged from glorious screams to comments of, "Really?" (but only following a sideways jump of at least three feet), to one woman who got into a snit and just stomped off. Generally, though the responses were great, especially from the kids and foreigners. The kids, in particular, showed no fear. They posed with zombies and in front of the hearse and danced with the skeletons.

(Spiderman Does a Turn With the Singing Skeleton)

One German gentleman came up and, explaining that it was his first time here, asked me when the holiday normally occurred and how long it lasted. I told him it was always the evening before All Saints' Day and, although the decorations went up a few days earlier, the kids came by only on this one night. He seemed intrigued, yet bemused, by the whole concept. He especially didn't seem to understand the gorilla chasing the six-foot banana down the street.

Another German family came by later in the evening. They were relative veterans, it seems, as they were all dressed as pumpkins. I informed them they made a very sincere pumpkin patch but I don't think they got the reference. And the only beagle that showed up was dressed as a lobster. 

The giant banana came back later in the evening all out of breath. He took a couple of candy bars and said, "Thanks. That monkey's been after me all night long."

(Giant Lawn Cat Is Watching You Trick-or-Treat)

Final tally: 200+ kids of various ages and sizes plus almost as many parents/guardians (many themselves in costume), three dogs (one disguised as a crustacean) and the equivalent of 23 bags of candy. And lots of appreciative compliments. Guess we'll do it again.

(Y'all come Back Next Year, Y'hear?)

The Cuddly Un-Dead

Well, my brother left for the bus to the boat to the Bahamas this morning and none of the Hallowe'en decorations are up, yet, although that's not entirely his fault.

(Paribanour and "Larry")

The cats, it seems, have adopted the newly arrived zombies and are much more comfortable cuddling with them than with the living humans who, y'know, feed them and clean their litter boxes and play with them and give them treats. Case in point: Paribanour snuggling up with both "Larry" and "Henry." 

                            

                                     (And with "Henry")

   (Paribanour relaxing in Henry's embrace . . .)   

I do like the way their eyes light up and match the zombies'.

We'll have to hurry to put up our decorations when my brother returns. Most of them are in storage and I don't even know where the storage company is so I can't do it myself. Neighbor Dan has his all laid out and was inflating them yesterday evening but he complained that the motors on several of them seemed to be wearing out and were just not pushing air like they should.

(. . . and sharing the love with Larry)

I wish we could trust the cats outside. They'd make a great addition to the cemetery section with their dark gray fur and glowing eyes. Maybe they'd be happy to curl up with their undead buddies out on the lawn. More likely, they'll freak out completely when a hundred or so costumed little kids and their parents wander up our drive.

That's the sort of thing that would bother them.

And Random Acts of Retail

My brother complained, after the mail came yesterday, "I just threw out every catalog in my room!" by which he meant approximately three dozen or so recent arrivals (and didn't count the twenty or so still in the living room). He held another even dozen in his hand fresh from the mailbox.

I often wonder from whence the catalogers get our address. It's kind of a game trying to figure out whose mailing list we came from. Sometimes it seems pretty obvious: Wild Wings, purveyor of wildlife coffee mugs, nostalgic animal art and clothing, most likely came by way of the World Wildlife Fund or Birds and Blooms magazine, both of which have had our information for years. Likewise, we know where Wireless (NPR), Signals (PBS), Smithsonian and National Geographic catalogs all come from.

But what about Front Gate? Their publication (I hesitate to call it a mere catalog) is printed on heavy glossy paper bound in a clay-coat four-color-process cover stock more suited to a commercial real estate prospectus. Then again, projecting that kind of image is necessary when your offerings--one-off holiday decorations and full-size pre-decorated Christmas trees--are priced from the low three-figures to the mid (and upper) four-figures. Are these guys, maybe, second generation from the Grandin Road people of life-size Hallowe'en zombie fame?

And then there's Russell's For Men. Apparently, there's an A. G. Russell's with a more general demographic somewhere that has skipped over us in favor of leather wallets, leather vests, leather travel accessories and knives of various sizes, shapes and utility (including, one presumes, scraping hides preparatory to making leather). Neither my brother nor I, are particularly lacking in testosterone yet we can not determine the provenance of this one.

Thanks to FedEx overnight delivery, we have a long way to go before the catalogers stop sending in the realization that is too late for us to order.

Transitions

A number of seasons are ending and beginning just now.

Rainy Season officially ended at the beginning of the month and I optimistically began leaving my car windows open to avoid the runaway greenhouse effect resulting from parking a sealed up vehicle in the sun. Unfortunately, the actual end-of-season is a bit more raggedy and I've had to bale twice now after leaving the car open at the library. And that doesn't even count my brother very kindly not waking me when he came home late one night as it started to shower and hanging towels all over my open windows. I have no idea why he has so many towels in his truck.

Fall is approaching. It is noticeably cooler (although today it's cloudy mostly because of Hurricane Sandy way off the east coast). I watched a tribe of very tiny ants stocking up for the coming "cold" spell. Scores of them were climbing up and down a vine including four triumphantly hoisting a cockroach leg aloft as they negotiated the tendrils. To be more precise, three of them were carrying the leg. The fourth had grabbed it in such a way that it's own legs couldn't reach any surface while they were moving and it just sort of dangled along for the ride not only not helping but actively adding to the burden.

With the weather cooling down, Bartleby has decided to become an outdoor cat again. She spends her time sleeping beneath one or the other of our vehicles or, occasionally, in a lawn chair and comes in only to dine. When we open the door for her she complains loudly at our inattention for not opening it sooner and, as soon as she finishes her meal, she starts yelling at us to let her out again. I am become majordomo to the cat.

Also, the zombies have come and gone. It's an annual migration, pretty much confined to the other side of the river.

Besides, Oktoberfest is here. After a couple of days no one on this side of the river will even notice a few zombies wandering loose.

And Not a Moment Too Soon

The UPS guy delivered four large boxes of body parts this morning.

I didn't know what they were, of course, when they arrived but they were addressed to my brother so I stacked the cartons in front of the door to his room. He took one look at them, smiled, and said, "Ah! Dead people!"

It seems we will be competing with Neighbor Dan in Hallowe'en excess this year after all. Neighbor Dan's blow-up menagerie of goblins, ghoulies and monsters has been spread across his lawn since the beginning of the month. Several of them are new this year. (The main effect, so far, is that Neighbor Dan has been unable to mow for almost three weeks and it shows.) All we've had to show until now are half a dozen balloon-head ghosts swaying around the live oak, and those only went up two days ago.

The contents of my brother's boxes consist of various zombie bits to be used to create a graveyard uprising.

(What a graveyard uprising might look like.)

My brother has started laying electric cords in preparation for the implantation of the inflatables. We're already stocked up on candy. I predict by the end of this weekend we will be in full holiday battle mode. 

Learning To Fit In

I was at the library today when the following announcement came over the public address system:

"May I have your attention, please. The zombie make-up workshop will be starting in the adult meeting room in five minutes."

I am beginning to suspect this mania for all things undead (which I share, by the way, being a huge fan of The Walking Dead and anything by George Romero) might be our society's way of coping psychologically with both the 9/11 trauma and the ensuing decade plus of war. Zombies are a way to both recognize and deny the permanence of death which will, eventually, take us as well. (I understand Romero's zombies were a statement against Cold War paranoia, or racism, or the banal conformism of a consumerist society but we always adjust our allegories to fit our current needs.)

Or maybe that's too heavy an interpretation and this is just American culture at its best. You're welcome.

I have to say I was tempted, but it turned out the workshop was for teens. Either way, they need to be prepared.

Suburban Zombie Dog-Walking Lady, Part 3

I have discovered the lair of the zombie dog-walking lady. It's at the furthest point of my walk before I begin the loop back. I have varied the timing of my walks (more by accident than design) and--arriving early one morning--discovered it standing by the circular drive, still, unmoving, looking for all the world like a giant, white, overweight, female jockey boy statue holding the reins to the dog. (So, just like one of those obnoxious jockey boy statues except for the giant, white, overweight female part.) It did not move an inch as I went past.

The house is strange but in a very subtle way. It is single story, as so many others in the neighborhood are, but with a roof that rises to the level of a two story structure without gables or skylight. It also has a half turret appendage attached to the back. (The back abuts an empty lot which in turn faces another road that is part of my walk so I can, between the two see the entirety of the place.) It can not be hollow under those huge eaves. No one would be crazy enough to heat or cool all of that empty space.

Since no house in south Florida has a basement, the water table being far too high, the only logical conclusion is that the reanimation lab is tucked up under the roof, invisible to the casual observer.

I have never seen lights on in this place, nor a car in the driveway. Since any closer inspection will involve either deception or trespass, I am not sure where to take the investigation from here.

Suburban Zombie Dog-Walkng Lady, Part 2

Encountered the SZD-WL again this morning. It was being led around by the aging shephard. I noticed the bandages are off its leg, which can mean only one thing...

Regeneration/reanimation is going on here! Which can mean only one thing...

There is a secret zombie regeneration/reanimation lab somewhere in the neighborhood!! Which can mean only one thing...

I have a mission! I must/will find that lab.

Suburban Zombie Dog-Walking Lady

As the days have become longer and hotter (and humider(?), humidier(?), more humidous(?)) I have moved my morning walk earlier and earlier to stay just ahead of sunrise. I see occasional neighbors up and about, usually a kid or two waiting for a school bus (that's over for now) or adults leaving for work or walking their dogs. I've gotten to know a couple of the dogs (Hey, Gina, hi, Harry!). But there's one I have not been able to introduce myself to.

He's an elderly but still magnificent shepherd who walks the same route almost every morning trailing a short, rotund zombie lady behind him. I can tell she's a zombie because her eyes are beady and unfocused, staring straight ahead into the middle distance. Her head never turns; she acknowledges nothing in their path. She does not deviate from the established route. She does not speak when spoken to. Lately she's appeared with bandages wrapped around one leg. I suspect she might be deteriorating.

At first I thought she might be a normal human but all stuck up and snotty in that stereotypical suburban way but that would've meant she was annoying and obnoxious. Dealing with which is not how I want to start the day. Then I thought maybe she was terrified of everything or pathologically shy which was not merely depressing but pathetic and also an early morning downer to be avoided.

I have therefor concluded she is a zombie attached to the shepherd every morning by its owner and set loose to act as a counterweight to any ambitions the old dog might still entertain. The dog, of course, knows just how far he can go before he has to turn around in order to be home before the sun is fully risen and his zombie can no longer walk. He's too old (and she's too heavy) for him to be dragging her any distance.

This conclusion also has the benefit of allowing me a little entertainment during my walks.