Last Thursday, just before I became ill, Zach and I attended a pumpkin carving party. It was my second year going, so I was determined to up the ante in terms of creativity.
Which means that I cheated and used a pattern, carving a menacing kitty in my pumpkin; thus, I had plenty of time left to gorge myself on Halloween-themed refreshments.
Zach, ever the artistic one, was inspired by the host's flag collection, and spent most of the party delicately carving the UN seal into his pumpkin.
Lo and behold, at the night's end, Zach had won first place in the competition, and I tied for second.
Triumphant, we ferried our jack-o-lanterns home and displayed them proudly outside of our sliding glass door. A day later, I was quite ill, and Zach was quite busy taking care of a difficult patient. But, we did manage to prop ourselves in front of the window in the den long enough to see what the real critics thought of our work:
Squirrels, one-by-one, ran up and devoured our jack-o-lanterns.
A piece of kitty's face ripped off here. One of kitty's legs there.
The really fun part centered on the meticulous dismantling of Zach's geographic masterpiece. First, the Great Australian Bight and the Timor Sea; then, the Arctic Ocean; next, the Mediterranean Sea.
By Halloween, there was nothing left of the United Nations seal except for a few pathetic fragments of an olive branch. The menacing cat looked more like a discarded corpse.
As luck would have it, however, our mauled jack-o-lanterns, the army of squirrels devouring them, and our own cat licking her lips as she watched the rodent armies through the window all combined to repel trick-or-treaters. Thus, in addition to the prizes we obtained from the pumpkin carving party, we are now gleefully devouring our way through two bags of candy, as the squirrels devour their way through our creativity.
Posted by James at November 5, 2005 10:25 AM
