We  love a holiday for which we can decorate our houses and doors, ourselves and our pets, and our workplaces. And ourselves at the workplace.  Today at the Library the Reference Desk was being staffed by a librarian in a witch’s hat – a really good one with a curved brim and a floppy tip.   

 Another great thing about  Halloween is the opportunity for wordplay.  Every store and online merchant that can work a pun into its ads has done so.  (Terror-ific Deal!  Unboo-lievable Savings!)   Today’s Houston Chronicle contrived five (5) Halloween-themed headlines just on Page One:  “Perry not spooked by slumping poll numbers,” “Texans scare up another victory,” “Mosquitoes engineered to kill their offspring,” “Hospitality begins at home. . . for the living,” about a local haunting, and “They go bite in the night” – a teaser for an article in the entertainment section about vampire bats. 

My favorite Halloween thing is the spiders.  There are hosts of black-furred, purple-kneed, king-sized arachnids on the roofs and front doors of houses.  One was clinging to the front of  the hostess’s podium at Gaido’s Seafood Restaurant in Galveston this week;  the hostess cheerfully introduced the giant black tarantula as Walter and told us he’s harmless.  On campus this morning I stopped at a street to let a cyclist whizz by and admire her deely-bobbers.  Bobbing above her head were four curled-up black spiders, each on a webby puff of white feathers.  In real life spiders unnerve me.  That may be why fake ones rather charm me. Especially when they have purple knees.