Halloween at the Otter's Holt

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love to decorate my yard for the event. I love to give candy and treats to the trick-or-treaters and enjoy all their costumes.




My yard is some version of a Creepy Graveyard every year: The Kilmore Street Cemetery (I live on Gilmore Street). (Thanks again for that great pun, Tim!)



Here are some skeletons along the walkway.



My mums always bloom for this season and make the graveyard look great.

The above mums above are my favorite color. Incidentally, they originally came from my Mum's garden.



Don't they look great with the gravestones?

Here are close-ups of the gravestones. I have hand-cut (well, with my scroll saw) gravestones I made from wood and painted with jokey gravestone names. I think they are very amusing! (click on picture for enlargement)



Here they are, from left to right.

Barry D'Alive, Stupid (Smoker) and I'm With Stupid, Rick Amortis, Justin Pieces, Willy B. Back, Ted N. Buried, and Manny Bones.

And the rest (click on picture for enlargement):




Ben Dover, and Myra Mains, one of my favorites; I think my fellow nurses can empathize with the sentiment on that stone.
Fester N. Rott, M. T. Tomb, Imus B. Goewin, Ima Spook and the one that's my top favorite: "Anita Transfusion." Another nurse-themed grave. ("Nurses don't die; they just float away.")

Here are my favorite Scary Rubber Dolls. Cute and scary. Just like me:



And what yard would be complete without severed limbs sticking out of doors?:



Here is the Jack-o-Lantern Totem Pole:



A girl can never have enough plastic rats!



THE SNAKE STORY
The last few years I've been including a trick-or-treat (depending on your point of view) with my candy. I take a pet (corn) snake and put it in the big plastic cauldron with the candy! Then I say, "Are you brave enough to snatch your candy from the Snake of Doom?"
I get a wide variety of reactions. All the kids seem impressed, and some think it's cool and want to pet the snake. Some are scared and take their candy from the other side of the cauldron where they think the snake's not looking. Some are so scared they ask their friends to get a piece for them, or if they are really wimps, they don't get any chocolate and can take a lame pixie stick or Halloween pencil from a different container.
Sometimes the kids are brave and the parents are chicken! And vice-versa. And I can hear them going down the street, saying to their friends,
"The lady in that house has a real SNAKE!!" I think this whole idea is pure genius. I wish I could take credit for it, but I have to admit, my boyfriend Grumpet thought of this snake-in-the-cauldron joke.

Now, if you want to try this yourself, here's a tip: give your snake a warm bath one or two days before the event. It'll stimulate his bowels and then for Halloween he'll have no poop to poop. Because if you don't, he will poop in your candy bowl, I guarantee it! And snake poop is pretty slimy and stinky.


I love to dress up my animals. Here are my cats, and one of my ferrets.



Speaking of cats:

THE CAT LITTER PAN PRANK
Now as long as I'm writing about great ideas from someone other than myself, I'm going to include what I think is the greatest practical joke in the world. This is by the ex-boyfriend of someone close to me. He went over some people's house who had a cat and kept their cat's litter pan in the bathroom. He went to the bathroom, and had to take a dump. Well, he took it IN THE CAT PAN!!! Can you imagine!! I'm laughing even as I type this, and I laugh every time I tell the story. Can you just imagine those people, making the discovery of the huge dump in their cat pan, scratching their heads and asking, perhaps even worriedly, "WHAT the heck is this? WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY CAT???"



Can you find the last rat?