In the quiet hours of dawn, all blissed-out and satisfied over the perfect, full-moon Halloween night and feeling sort of sentimental that this would be my daughter's last Halloween (since she's a senior in HS) I began to dismantle my spooky porch scene---spiderwebs, fog machine, sheer and slit curtains flying about in the wind, head-on-platter---you know, the usual stuff. The only thing that did not cooperate last night was my small Frankenstein, who normally jumps into action dancing to "Thriller" when someone walks by, but who's sensor must have been off somehow and therefore could not be counted on to do his Halloween magic...until this morning...when my neighbors were probably still sleeping.

As I went about doing the meditative tasks, pulling the cobwebs out of the thorny rose bushes and enjoying the morning air, I walked passed Frankie, completely forgetting he was there. He launched into some sort of SUPER LOUD final hurrah. I came straight out of my skin and just about wet my pants. I could not get the little fellow to stop blasting THRILLER out to the masses no matter what I did to try to turn him off!

To make matters worse, the battery case was tightened down by a screw so I couldn't pull that out. Smother him with a pillow? A stake through the heart? (No, wait...that's for vampires.) After many frantic efforts by me to stop him, I believe he just sort of croaked on his own. RIP Frankie. You've been a great team player for many Octobers.

And big apologies to my neighbors.