Boo! (Did that Scare You?) A pre-Halloween Contemplation
When I saw one dead squirrel on the highway, it was sad. Two dead squirrels, it was kind of...odd. But after seeing–and I'm not kidding—dozens and dozens of dead squirrels on the Massachusetts Turnpike, I knew there was something ver-ry weird going on. (This photo is of a plush animal.)
I tried to take a photo, but it was too difficult. "What're you doing?" Jonathan said.
"Trying to take a picture of all the dead squirrels," I said, window down, leaning out. "Can you maybe stop?"
"We're on the highway! Going 70 miles an hour!" (ed. note: she means 55.)
"I know. Just thought I'd try it." But it didn't work. I just got blur.
Anyway, it's probably for the best that I can't get photos. I tried to Google photos of dead squirrels, just to –illustrate. But trust me, you don't wanna start trolling for "dead animal" photos. I stopped after about two seconds. So, no photos of real squirrels. (You're welcome.)
But I immediately started thinking of reasons why this squirrel carnage would happen. (Why did the squrrel cross the....er, try to cross the...)
(Other than that the squirrels are daring each other to get across the highway. Boastful squirrel says—"That guy's an idiot. I bet I can make it!" And on and on.)
Anyway. I thought: maybe it means the plague is coming, or someone is doing experiments with some new psychedelic drugs and trying them out on the poor squirrels. Or a squirrel serial killer is on the loose. At Bouchercon, one author was saying that squirrels are incredibly homicidal—that if one person were killed for every murdered squirrel, the population of Cincinnati would be wiped out. In like, a month, or something.
I stopped listening to the squirrel-murder stuff. (Which you are probably now considering doing, too.)
But the point is—whew, I hear you saying—it was scary. Really really scary. And I immediately started making up all the truly scary stuff that it could mean. If squirrels are throwing themselves like wacked-out lemmings across four lanes of treacherous highway, is this something that could happen to people?
I mean, unlikely. But why do we scare ourselves? Life is scary enough anyway, if your brain is wired that way. And I know some people's aren't. For instance:
When Jonathan leaves the house to go do an errand or something, I always say: "Be careful!"
And he's always baffled. "Of what?" he says.
But the world seems threatening to me. (It might be because of working in TV news, when I see every bad thing that happens.)
I remember the first really scary thing I ever saw: a movie called The Incredible Shrinking Man. I was maybe—ten years old. And I completely freaked. Do you remember that movie? Some sort of radiation (ooh, is that what happened to the squirrels?) washed over this guy, and it started making him smaller. And smaller. At one point, he was fighting a spider with a needle as a sword. SO SCARY.
And Twilight Zone, remember? I was riveted. The one with the zoo? Where it turned out the earthling was in a cage? And wasn't there one which ended with the devil (dressed in a tuxedo) laughing evilly, and intoning "This IS the other place!" ? I can still hear that voice.
Wizard of OZ. Terrified. I assigned myself the duty of sitting in the wayback of the family station wagon (this is when I was, what, younger than 10, probably) and watching the sky for tornadoes. I was very very diligent about this, and never told my parents I was the one protecting my family. I did a great job, apparently, since we did not die in a tornado. (Hey, it was Indiana. It could happen.)
In college, we were assigned to read Dracula by Bram Stoker. "It's really intense!" The professor said. " Pish tush," I said, or something like that. It's a BOOK. What could be so scary?
It was college, so I couldn't go get garlic or anything, and being Jewish, the wearing of a cross wasn't going to fly. But I admit to you. I had to do something because the book said vampires could come in through closed windows as dust motes on moonlight. Are you kidding me? I decided if I slept with my arms in the shape of a cross, that would do it. I guess it worked. (mwa ha ha.)
In my twenties? Rosemary's Baby. The book. YIKES! I read it on an airplane, I remember, on the way from DC to New York, and I almost got on the return flight without getting off. Eating "the mouse,'? And seeing where the paintings had been taken down from the wall? And the nice doctor who turned out to be (spoiler alert) in on the whole thing? Then using the scrabble tiles to spell out "All Of Them Witches" from "Roman Castevet." Wait, that doesn't work. What was the anagram again? I'm too scared to remember. 
Thinking about this, as I've grown older, made up things are much less frightening (Blair Witch? Showing me nothing..) and real life things take over. But it's almost Halloween, the scary season, and once again we bring out our scariest things--since it's more fun to be scared by fictional scariness than focus on what's truly terrifying.
What's the scariest thing you've even seen or read? Fictional, of course, I mean.
I'm sure we'll be talking about Halloween costumes later. But word to the wise--maybe don't dress as a squirrel this year. You never know.
