Turkey Season. Deer Season. Turkey Season! Deer Season! Penguin Season?!

    This time of year, there are plenty of things to watch out for on the roads.  Some rather close, others not so much. Starting back in late September/early October, I began to notice bunches of turkeys along my regular route to and from work. Mostly, they were groups of two to four, occasionally more, in yards and fields along Indian Creek in the mornings.  In the evening, I would see a few along a certain stretch of US 23 at the top of a hill.  None of the sightings were near the road, but I had to be sure none of them would try to fly across the road.  I almost hit a turkey that way on the Mountain Parkway once, but usually they fly way overhead. (I have also had heron fly alongside my car a few times, but they are not part of this post.)  By mid-October, the sightings started to wane, although I still catch a few now and then.  Just last week I saw a flock of at least twenty all along a hillside on US 23.  Fortunately, they were well away from the highway.  After the turkeys started to disappear, deer started to show up.  One ran down the road ahead of my car on Robinson Creek, but the main sightings were in an abandoned yard at the start of the Floyd side of Abner.  It wasn't that late, but the cloud cover made it a little darker than usual that evening.  That is when I saw the deer on the side of the road, only for then to run off into the weeds along the hillside. They would show up for the next few evenings, but I haven't seen them since.  There have been other deer sightings, including a possible pair that just had leapt over a guard rail a second before I got there.  I just could glimpse a white tail behind the rail before they ran down the hill on the other side.  However, the things I have most seen from the road are decorations, which provide an entirely different level of distraction.  Normally, I would have to wait until early October, maybe late November before the decorations would start to go up.  I saw my first Halloween decorations before Labor Day.  That's right, August. I had never seen anyone put their decorations that early before Halloween.  This is also a reason why I didn't post anything about them before now. Why reward someone for doing something so out-of-season? (Also, I was in the middle of a series, so I didn't want to interrupt it.)  This year, the 'crawling ghost' was ubiquitous, with the eight-legged beast being a little less so. (I say they were spiders.  My mom said they were octopuses. [Octopi is the non-standard plural. {Based on the language history, the proper term might be 'octopedes,' but since I first heard that term on a cartoon, I might be wrong.} Many people think it is an acceptable alternative.] However, how can an octopus be scary enough for Halloween?)  Some people had those giant skeletons.  A few had more than one.  One house also had an entire table of skeletons around a picnic table as if having a party, or playing cards, to go with their two giants, as well as inflatables and a few other smaller skeletons.  Inflatables were all over the place, with The Nightmare before Christmas being the most common. The one house of Indian Creek that goes all out for Halloween didn't disappoint either, with multiple tableaus featuring pop culture characters such as Beetlejuice and Jigsaw.  They also had a trio of skeletons on a fishing boat. One last house didn't put out their inflatable haunted tree until the week before Halloween.  They also had a pair of silver-and-blue penguins.  Apparently, they put out some of their Christmas decor early so they wouldn't have to go back more than once.  Now, while my concerns about using penguins as Christmas decorations in the Northern Hemisphere is well-known, and many don't agree with them, I think we all can agree that penguins are not appropriate for Halloween.  They had put out some Christmas decorations before Halloween.  Now, some might say that isn't too early, I think most will agree that one should at least take down their Halloween decorations before putting up anything for Christmas.  In fact, the Christmas decorations started going up within a week of Halloween.  The biggest ones are giant inflatables, some well over ten feet tall.  Some people still have their giant skeletons up, possibly to put Santa costumes on them to get more use out of them.  One house has a Christmas tree up in every window.  However, a few houses actually have Thanksgiving decorations up.  Mostly, they use inflatable turkeys.  That house of Indian Creek actually repurposed two of their mannequins by dressing them up as pilgrims.  One male and one female, although both mannequins might be women.  Seeing so many different holidays competing with one another is almost enough to drive me to distraction. Not quite literally, but close. At least the animals don't seem to be interfering with the decorations, yet.