Halloween Spooks

On Halloween evening, we were greeted at the door by a bride zombie, Hydra (the three headed monster in Greek mythology), and a cyborg.   It was our delightful landlord’s children looking for Halloween treats!  We excitedly talked to them for a few minutes and learned where they were headed next in the car.  Houses are much too far apart here to walk around trick-or-treating and it is much too cold to do that anyway.  It’s also nearly pointless for the children to dress up because after their costume goes on, then it's time to put on the winter jacket, arctic boots, hat, and gloves to stay warm.  And that pretty much takes care of anyone actually seeing your costume.  But, that doesn’t stop the Halloween spirit from being alive and well in Delta! 

After our visitors departed, Ben and I retreated to the upper level of our cabin where it is warmer to read.   Not long after we had made ourselves comfortable and became engrossed in our books, did we hear sounds coming from downstairs.  It sounded as though a creature was lurking around below us.   We shot nervous glances at each other.  Ben, scared at what he might find (it’s Halloween after all AND a full moon), peered over our railing, scanning the downstairs vicinity.  What he saw was…..nothing.   We worried out loud for a few minutes that maybe the squirrels that lived in our roof were taking over underneath the house too.  Then, we went back to reading.  Not more than a few minutes later, the sound appeared downstairs again, only this time much louder and harder to ignore.  It really sounded like something was INSIDE the house, not below it.  Ben once again shot up and ran to his lookout from the railing.  “Oh no,” Ben said.   “What is it???” I nervously asked.

Good luck finding a new home, Mr. Vole!

Well, as it turned out, our Halloween visitor was not a squirrel or a mouse, as may be expected, but rather a vole.   We spent the next few minutes chasing the vole around the kitchen and then Ben, drawing from his past skills as a high school basketball star, threw a large Tupperware container over the vole as it ran, capturing it underneath.   Phew….problem averted!  Or was it……

Now we were left with an extremely cute vole peering at us from under its plastic prison.  Any normal family in the interior would’ve killed it in an instant.  Even the beautiful, rare, lynx are seen as varmints to be trapped and killed here.  Although Ben and I had our fair share of killing roof-dwelling squirrels already, we couldn’t bear to kill another small creature.  But we also did not want this vole to be back in our house anytime soon.  So, we did what any typical person would do in this situation.  With subzero temperatures outside, we bundled up and took our vole for his very first car ride.  The vole got to experience the thrill of driving down the Alaska Highway under a clear starry sky, illuminated by the full moon.  It was a beautiful, snowy ride for the vole.  When we felt we were many, many, many vole steps away from our house, we pulled over and let the little guy out into the cold, fresh air again.  The vole, obviously loving his first ride on the highway, quickly ran back onto the road and started his trek to his new home………precisely in the direction of our house again.  “No, no no,” we screamed from the car!  “Wrong way!”  Then we saw a car approaching our vole.  The headlights hit the little vole running down the highway and we watched in horror.  Thankfully the car missed the vole by a mere couple of inches allowing it to continue on its nighttime journey, hopefully, with any luck, to someone else’s house.