Sadly, these are not the first signs of the changing season. Some retailers are all too happy to bring out Halloween merchandise right along with back-to-school supplies, and while they're at it, Christmas items as well. It can be downright frightening!
While some people really decorate their houses to the Halloween hilt, I would prefer seeing some of that stuff pop up when it's actually Halloween. And some of it, not at all to say the least. Especially not during the first few weeks of school.
Giant lawn inflatable ghosts can be fun for the kiddos, but why not wait until say, October, to blow them up? One house already has their haunted trick-or-treat entryway hooded in black tarp. Five weeks before Halloween. They have body-looking-things hanging from their trees and honestly, I can't even look at it. If I had little kids I would most certainly avoid that house. I don't especially like being frightened, having outgrown scary movies long ago. I kind of find real-life frightening enough at times.
Like today, for example, when sitting at the patio table eating a quick sandwich during an afternoon of yard work. Scattered leaves were on the patio table, which looked pretty, but I began idly picking them off while I ate my lunch. Then I noticed little brown droppings right under our closed patio umbrella. "What is that?" I asked.
"Looks like mouse droppings," my husband said, leaning forward, peering at the middle of the table. Then our eyes traveled upwards.
"Would a mouse hide up under a closed umbrella?" I asked.
We both frowned at each other, thinking that it was unlikely. We had seen a mouse before, but that was years ago. And living in a rural area, we've had more than our share of "country folk," such as rattle snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, and even a bobcat.
After one of the rattle snake incidents, where there were two inside the house on the same night, I was ready to pack my bags and move back to the city. "I've had it with the country!" I had cried that night. But time passed and seasons changed and we were once again blessed with the serene peace that harmoniously settles around us at the end of the day, while living in our natural country setting.
This new puzzlement of rodent droppings, that we didn't exactly have the time to investigate, lasted about as long as it took to chew the last bites of our sandwiches. As we rose from our chairs, my son and I stepped cautiously back, already a little grossed out. My husband began turning the little crank to open the umbrella. Suddenly, something flew by, giving us all a fright! The zig-zagged way it darted back and forth, and circled crazily overhead distinguished it as being a bat. A large one.
We could see its pointy wings and dark mousy shape right in front of our faces as it flew abruptly in apparent confusion. I screamed as it came right at me, just missing my head. Then it turned and headed back towards my husband, who ducked. He started calling for me to get something to scare it off. Then he saw a plastic rake and grabbed it, turning back. At that same moment he lost sight of it.
"Where is it?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said.
We skimmed our eyes over the roofline. The sky was clear and all went quiet. I decided to watch from the safety of behind the kitchen sliding glass door. My husband had no choice then, but to bring in both umbrellas to discourage the bat from coming back. So, he went to the second patio table and started opening that umbrella and as that one lifted, I saw this brown lump clinging to the top fold. I began banging on the glass, getting my husband's attention, pointing furiously at the umbrella, and since he couldn't see anything, he was looking at me like, "What? I can't hear you!"
I opened the glass door, sticking my face through the opening. "It's right there! On the outside of the top crease!" He went around and just then it let go, flying erratically towards us again. I slammed the door and it landed back on the first umbrella. Finally, just as my husband lifted the rake to send it off again, the bat leapt back into flight, heading past our yard in a different direction.
That was not the first bat-sighting around here. They are commonly seen flying several feet overhead at twilight as we take our evening strolls. But it is the first time we had one flying low and close, scaring us like the ones we decorate with on Halloween. And I'm sure we had given the bat a fright as well.
My heart took a little time to beat normally again. My husband went back to his yard work and I came in to write about this little Halloween fright. And wouldn't you know, as I was typing, from the open window I suddenly heard my neighbor screaming in his back yard. With it being so close to Halloween, I had an inkling as to what may have frightened him. Maybe.
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