(Written Nov. 1, but not posted until now, due to the usual legal hassles and irritated parents, and suchlike)
Dawn, November first.
No kids made it past the perimeter again – third year in a row – but judging from the blast area, at least one made it a good fifteen feet into the minefield.
I think I’m gonna quit bothering with razorwire. The little buggers go through it like it’s not even there. They ALL seem to carry wirecutters these days, and that stuff is expensive, you know?
This was the first year I quit stringing claymores. The neighbor on my south side has been bitching about how they pockmark the siding on the back of his garage. Wonder how he feels about those steg harpoons? So far, I haven’t heard from him about that.
Some of the neighbors are still griping about the bouncing bettys, too, but fuck 'em. Some traditions are sacred. You don’t hear ME beefing about those damn small-calibre sentry guns rattling all night, do you? I mean, some people have NO class. When I was a kid, NOBODY used full-auto weaponry, much less unmanned! Well, except maybe for that crazy old WWII veteran guy, down at the end of the block, who always sandbagged his front porch and sat up all night with a damn .50 caliber out there.
And he just didn’t get it when we toilet-papered his house a week after Halloween, every year…
The thermograph registered some fun around the back yard – apparently, at least one of the little bastards was using light-intensifier goggles, this time – but they still don’t know WHAT the fuck to do about the motion detectors. Jeez, it has yet to occur to ANY of them just to toss a rock across the heath to check for beams, or simply waggle a hat on a stick in the hot zone until the automatic steglauncher runs out of flechettes. Don’t they teach these kids ANYTHING these days?
Maybe not. We learned the trick from old cowboys-and-indians movies, and you just don’t see a lot of those on TV any more.
Then again, they’re getting cleverer in other ways. Day before Halloween, they kept buzzing the house with an RC plane. I’d bet anything it was equipped with video… particularly since I didn’t do any obvious work in the back yard this year; the motion detector was already there, and the steglauncher was rigged to fire out the shed window. Silly little buggers prolly thought the razorwire was all there was between them and all the candy…
Judging from the blood spots and scattered candy corn and individually wrapped mini-choco-bars in the grass, we nailed at least two of them back there, this year. Drag marks indicate their buddies came back and got them; at least they’re still doing that. The wife and I have a bet going to see what year the first generation quits coming back in for their wounded.
Man. Can’t wait for Christmas…