Not all creepy things at Maywood are in the cabinets.  Some are in the fridge.  (In fact, one of my scariest moments recently came today when my mom brought me home quasi-sedated from the hospital and I realized she was going to open the fridge to fix me something to eat! )  But it is in the woods at night where true creepiness can be found–usually in the imagination of certain family members.

John and I are quite comfortable with the most of the woodland sights and sounds.    When the film Blair Witch Project came out, I laughed.  It looked like it had been filmed in our yard.  How scary is that?  We enjoy watching the bats fly around at night.  They eat the mosquitos.  And watching the flying squirrels emerge from our attic to the trees is a relaxing spring evening activity for us.  It is even more entertaining when John gets out his air rifle and I shine the flashlight on them.  (Look, you’d shoot them too if they woke you up with their night-time cavorting in the attic.)  I acknowledge that the screaming-woman-being-murdered sound of the screech owl is a bit disconcerting, but the fortissimo chorus of catydids in August is relaxing, if a notch or two too loud.

Several family members insist that they heard a mountain lion or some other truly frightening and dangerous creature roaring in the woods one night.  “Have you never heard it?????”they ask.  Um…no.  Sorry.  And we don’t have mountain lions around here.  Maybe it was one of four year old Harper’s imaginary creatures.  He has one named Buggy, who seems to always be losing one of his eyes.  Another one of his creepy monsters has red eyes and is too difficult even to draw.  Fortunately for us all, the monsters are afraid of bonfires.  So the best thing to do to ward off creepy things around here is to build a roaring bonfire and settle in the adirondack chairs with a bag of the enormous extra-large jumbo Campfire marshmallows.  If we get full from eating the marshmallows, we can always shoot them at the monsters hiding in the trees.