"Haunted" Halloween Party

I decided to throw a “Haunted” Halloween Party this year. I wanted all of the guests to feel their fur crawl and have their dreams invaded by all manner of monsters for days to come. I setup a spider that drops down on invisible fishing line, and ghosts that pop out of Guinness beer bottles. My fellow ‘munks are going to think they had too much to drink before their first sip. I hope my faithful blog followers will not spill the seeds to the rest of the Woodpilers. I will give a behind scenes look at my party arrangements.

As you can see the “ghosts” are just paper cutouts attached to a wooden spoon.

 

They look real when properly installed

I put all of the snacks inside of the witch’s hat!

Hi everyone, this is Vinnie the P., Chippy’s cousin. I am afraid Chippy has been admitted to Mercy Hospital’s “Fright Ward”. They handle everything from children’s nightmares to exorcisms. I better fill you in on the events leading up to this. Chippy rented a space next to the “Lucky Critter” for his party. The “Lucky Critter” is one of those phony fortune telling places. The Madame that runs the fortune parlor recently bought a 14^th century witch’s chant book at the local church sale. No surprise, she tried some of the chants and opened up a portal to the nether world on Halloween. On Halloween the spirits and monsters of the nether world are at their strongest, the gate between the worlds is the weakest. Several ghosts and other monsters escaped before I could close the portal. I called out the Woodpile Ghost Busters team but we couldn’t find them in the fortune parlor. We heard a commotion next door and ran as fast as we could. We only found an empty patch of grass. I checked the security camera and this is what we saw:

 

Chippy was surprised how “realistic” his decorations looked.

He thought it might be a trick of the late afternoon lighting.

Then Chippy felt something brush up against him.

 He anxiously looked around but all he noticed was his Guinness bottles had disappeared.

He was dissatisfied with the location of the spider so he went to move it only to discover it moved on its own!

The spider quickly grabbed Chippy with its legs! Then the ghost spoke “I am the chairwomen of the Ghost Frighteners Union. How dare you hire non-union ghosts for your Halloween party! We have `disposed’ of them and replaced them with union workers. I will be taking over supervision of this party. Now begone with you.”

The guests were surprised to only to find a single pumpkin as decoration and no snacks, no beer. They started muttering about how this was the lamest Halloween party in history.

Then the spider and ghosts crashed the party and started haunting the guests. All you could see were paws flying every which direction. It was total chaos and shear panic. All the while Chippy watched from behind a log in abject terror as his dream of a “haunted” Halloween party came all too true.

Sunflower Seed Recycling Program

The Woodpile City Council was concerned about the dramatic increase in the bird seed budget.  I was hired as a consultant to investigate.

I staked out the bird feeders with my binoculars. I noticed that the birds were picky eaters. They were tossing away perfectly good seeds because of minor blemishes or the wrong size. It was incredible how much seed was going to waste. I estimate a ¼ pound a day from just one feeder.

I brain stormed a solution and decided to implement a seed recycling program.

Here I am on a “stakeout” of the bird feeders

I installed a large bowl to collect the seeds being dropped by the birds.

I had to add a brick to keep it from being blown away.

By now you’re thinking how are a bunch of chipmunks going to collect the recycled seeds in the bowl? I think this sequence of photos will explain it.

 

As for my “consultant fee” I got the lucrative job of emptying the recycled seeds! Well, I have to store them someplace, so, I plan on dumping them “temporarily” in my burrow’s sub-basement warehouse.

How do I get down from here? Maybe I should have thought this plan out a bit better …

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