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Saturday, October 15, 2011

It is NOT the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Last week, I was enjoying the beautiful 80 degree weather, soaking it in, ecstatic that fall had finally arrived in the Valley of the Sun. Pumpkin patches were full, halloween decorations were beginning to appear, children began playing outside again, and it seemed like it just couldn't get any better.

And, it didn't.

Also last week, my daughter brought a pumpkin home from her very first field trip to a farm. I know very little about pumpkins, but I do know that they need to be kept cool or they get icky, so I kept it inside on a hand-made halloween tablecloth, made lovingly by my mother, atop a table inside my air-conditioned house.

Yesterday, is when things went awry. The details are a bit fuzzy, as I have a tendency to blackout in situations such as these; but from what I can recall, my young daughter picked up her pumpkin and said, "Mommy, there's worms on the pumpkin." I rolled my eyes, glanced over briefly and said, "No, honey it's probably just moldy, it might still be too warm inside the house, so it's more than likely just going bad. We'll probably have to throw it out." Then my older daughter looked at it.

"Mom, the mold is moving."

There were a bunch of tiny little, white, worm-like things all over the bottom of the pumpkin and a circle of them on the tablecloth.

For me, this is when my fight or flight instincts kick in. I thought quickly and wisely. I made my oldest daughter throw the pumpkin outside in the trash. What? You really think I was going to touch that thing? I grabbed the tablecloth by the ends (the bug free zones), hosed off the stowaways and tossed it directly into the washing machine on HOT. Three washings later, I'm still considering throwing it out. (Sorry Mom!)

A little bit of mold on a pumpkin I can handle, but when it becomes fodder for maggots or worms or whatever they were.... um... GROSS. It was INSIDE my house. I had bugs!

Luckily, the creatures were confined to the pumpkin and the tablecloth it sat on. Otherwise, I'd be writing this from a hotel room.