EEEEK! Pumpkin Carnage!

What did these poor pumpkins ever do to us?

One day they are sitting in their patch with all their pumpkin friends. They are basking in the warm summer sun, growing fat and happy from the warmth of the season and the water their farmer has so lovingly(so they think) given them.

Then one day, out of the blue, Whack! They are cut off, severed from the vine, all ties to what they had known sheared away.


They are hauled away, first in farm trucks, then in semi trucks, and then in SUV's only to end up on the kitchen tables of people intent on making lanterns of them.

Men, women and children, carving tools in hand descend upon the poor orange squash. Helplessly it sits there as it's stem is cut off and it's insides are scooped out with spoons, spatulas and dirty hands.

The carnage continues as the poor pumpkin is carved and cut, minced and mutilated - until at last it is over. The pumpkin that once sat so proud, orange, happy and warm in his patch is reduced to nothing but a shell -- with a silly face.

Just when it seemed that the poor pumpkin has suffered enough, it is hammered with another blow. The same men, women and children that had so brutally gouged a face into it's side, smile with joy as photos of the battered pumpkin are taken to place in scrapbooks as memories of this day of pumpkin carnage.

Once nightfall comes, poor pumpkin is put out in the cold, all alone, while his humiliation is illuminated for all in the night to see by the small candle that has been placed inside him.

I'm sure glad I'm not a pumpkin!