Some cold-hearted SOB cut off an alligator's head and dumped it in the woods of Westport yesterday. This is an astonishing act of animal cruelty, and the Westport police are asking for any help that the public might be able to offer. Call them at 508-636-1122 if you know something.
Why would someone own an alligator? Why would they cut off the head from it like it was MacBeth or something?
Well, I can see why someone would want to own one. Alligators are cool. Its like having a baby dinosaur. However, there is immense difficulty in having a gator around the house, and only serious people should consider it.
When non-serious people own them, they end up headless in the forest.
I did a bit of research on decapitating alligators. I thought it might be a Santeria thing, but nothing I dug up on Santerian animal sacrifices includes alligators. My sources might just have a passing interest in Santeria and not be aware of the Santeria Alligator Sacrifice Ritual, but I don't have enough to even start slurring Santeria people.
Headless alligators turn up in Florida and Louisiana now and then. Several sources are mentioned... poachers, trophy-hunters, fishermen who hooked a protected species and didn't want to talk to the park ranger about it... and even some guy who was injured (or perhaps had a relative killed) by an alligator, who now holds an Ahab/Quint-style grudge against the species in general. It could have been the work of a Florida State fan trying to send a message to his Florida fan neighbor.
Of course, not a lick of that makes sense in Westport, Massachusetts. The alligator poaching scene here is somewhat limited by the fact that alligators are not found in the wild in Massachusetts. Not many fishermen hook them up here for the same reason, and that low number is even bested by the paucity of people who come to Massachusetts looking to kill wild alligators for trophies. Ahab or Quint would know better than to hunt Gator here, and the 'Noles/Gator argument looks like a long shot.
That leaves one obvious answer, and one wild guess.
Wild guess first... has anybody ever had alligators fight? You know, like pits or chickens? Starve them, tell them one gator said something about the other's sister... get 'em mad enough to fight? Bet on it? Sort of like Jacco Macacco meets Wally Gator, while filming Bloodsport.
The animal lover in me beats it down, but before it goes down, the part of me that would like to see two alligators fight gets a few words off.
The more obvious answer is that somebody went all Sleepy Hollow on a pet. You can buy alligators easily enough. You can get one here (when in stock) for $149.99, no questions asked... at least not at the alligator store. Your wife or landlord may not share your enthusiasm for a pet alligator when it is as large as the sofa, eating X pounds of meat a week, sh*tting wherever the f*ck it wants, and maybe kinda possibly most likely might be responsible for the missing Schnauzer.
A decent man, when faced with that scenario, will try to sell the alligator through whatever channels used alligator sales move through. If that fails, he should man up and call the town's Natural Resources Officer to get the gator taken care of. It is illegal to own a gator in Massachusetts.
At that point, the less than decent man has to resolve the Ol' Yeller quandary... sure, you can lock Ol' Yeller out in the barn and let the rabies do him in... or you can do the humane thing, take him out behind the barn, and put a hole in his head like Dig-Dug.
I don't think that alligators get rabies, but if the wife issues an ultimatum, the effect on the gator's longevity is similar to that of Ol' Yeller. You can loose him into a Massachusetts lake in March to slowly freeze to death, or you can make the ending quick and painless.
That scenario gives too much credit to the man in the Westport case, who may also have killed it just so he could make a trophy of the head or jaws.
I have no idea, which is why they pay detectives to figure out stuff like this.
How about a quick quiz? The answers will be at the end of the article.
Which Sorts Of Wildlife Can You Own In Massachusetts?
1) Tilapia?
2) Piranha?
3) Northern Leopard Frog?
4) Fathead Minnow?
5) Red-eared Slider Turtle?
6) Boa Constrictor?
7) Reticulated Python?
8) Anaconda?
9) Ridge-tailed Monitor Lizard?
10) Komodo Dragon?
11) Emu?
12) Ostrich?
13) Southern Flying Squirrel? (I won't give it away, but owning the moose is illegal)
14) Water Buffalo?
15) Wolf-Dog Hybrids?
Imagine if the Westport alligator's owner got the speech from his girl in July, and decided to just let it loose into, say, Long Pond in Lakeville? As we kick it around here, remember that I'm not a herpetologist, and that this is more Edutainment than an actual expert speaking to you.
Alligators, according to my 45 seconds of research, can be active in temperatures as low as 40 degrees. 40 degrees may kill weaker alligators, while a stronger one will seek a warmer microclimate in which to do his alligator stuff. When he gets chilly, he brummates... which is a sort of less torpid version of hibernating. A lake gator in Massachusetts wouldn't live long, but for a spell, he'd be unchallenged on the top of the food chain... unless he went swimming with a great white shark.
Long Pond is a warmwater pond, covering 1700 acres. It's the largest pond in our region, and one of the largest in Massachusetts. It's the drinking water for New Bedford.
Long Pond was last surveyed in June of 1990 when fisheries crews found largemouth bass,
bluegill, chain pickerel, yellow perch, white perch, pumpkinseed, white sucker, alewife, blueback
herring, brown bullhead, golden shiner, tessellated darter, lake chubsucker and bridle shiner. A few
walleyes are occasionally taken in Long Pond River. Thanks to Mass,gov for the pond map.
I have no idea how cold or warm Long Pond gets (this chart shows what sort of fish prefer which temperatures of water, and you can sort of cross-reference what the summer water temperature may be in lakes that they inhabit), although I have read tales of released pet alligators surviving in southern Ohio.
I don't know how much fish an alligator needs. I have read that a meal goes a long way with a gator, and that a 1000 pound alligator will need less food in a year than a 100 pound dog requires.
The horror movie starts when he can't catch enough fish to survive. He might be able to snatch a deer as it gets a drink, but this isn't an Africa savannah with herds of antelope all drinking at once. Deer are also nocturnal, a time when Ali Gator would be brummating. No local animal has a defense mechanism response set for alligator attacks.
There are also families living in houses on the lake. Alligators have killed 26 Americans since 1970, and have maimed even more people. Even a 7 footer is perfectly capable of dragging away and killing a full-grown man. Alligators generally flee when humans approach, but if he's hangry or something... hey, time for some People Food!
An alligator in a Massachusetts lake with an acquired taste for human flesh would launch a bigger manhunt than a Chechnya brothers APB. We would be unable to call upon Steve Irwin. We'd have to solve this problem ourselves.
While Jessica and I are finishing up work on the South Coast Compound of our media empire, we thought that we would take to the countryside and see what we could do for you all...
This article could have had several titles. I've erased several of them myself, and Jessica vetoed one. Among those titles that we considered and discarded for one reason or another were:
"Where To Hide A Body In Eastern Massachusetts" "Where To Have A Sasquatch Run In Front Of Your Car" "Where To Teach Your Clumsy Daughter How To Drive" "Where To Smoke A Joint And Drive 27 MPH With No One Behind You" "Where To Illegally Dump Your Washing Machine" "Where Old People Who Just Now Bought The '57 Chevy That They Always Wanted Go To Drive With Elvis Playing And Not Have Modern Kids Laugh At Them" "Where UFOs Look To Scare Isolated Individuals Whom No One Will Believe" "Where To Stumble Onto A Satanic Ritual" "Where To Bet Your Car's Pink Slip On A Drag Race" "Where To Introduce The 'Put Out Or Get Out' Dating Quandary" "Where To Be Mistaken For A Deer And Shot By A Hunter" "Where To Go If You Feel Like Driving But May Have A Warrant Out For Your Arrest"
Among the contributors to this website... Stacey, who is a soccer mom, came up with "stashing a body," "Satanic ritual" and the date rape joke. Her daughter, who is in her teens, came up with the Elvis joke. Non-hunting Stephen came up with the hunting joke. Abdullah, who has no kids, came up with the Clumsy Teen Driver joke. Stephen had Stacey's "Where To Stash A Body" joke as a working title for this article before Jessica intervened.
A nice, isolated stretch of road is a wonderful thing, and it gets more and more rare every passing day. In other parts of the world and even in other parts of Massachusetts, a lonely run of street isn't a rare thing. Eastern Massachusetts isn't other parts of the world, however.
As my friend Beth once noted after leaving New Jersey, "You forget how accustomed you can be to white trash, overpopulation and air pollution."
As people diffuse throughout America, these empty spaces will become harder and harder to find. Our elderly residents can no doubt recall when somewhere with a busy mall used to be a back road to nowhere.
We all have our own reasons for seeking an isolated road to drive on. We listed some up above, you may have other reasons, and no one is here to judge you. We're just here to guide you to some cool places to drive.
We'll use some of those aborted titles as logic for including certain streets in the list, and we will also try to point out where certain practices might prove impractical. We try to be inclusive to anyone who might stumble onto our humble web page, even chronic litterers and serial killers.
So, without any further ado, we give to you but a small sample of some places you can go in our area to have the road all to yourself.
courtesy of Sara Flynn
Gurnet Road/King Arthur Road, Duxbury
I use the dual designation here because, even after growing up there for 30 years, I'm not 100% sure where Gurnet Road ends and King Arthur Road begins. Google Maps says KAR juts out just a few hundred yards from Saquish. Other people, maybe more for convenience than for authenticity, use the Powder Point Bridge as the dividing line between the two roads.
Gurnet Road implies the residential section of Duxbury Beach, while King Arthur Road would be very handy for describing the road south of the bridge. However, I'm fairly sure that it is Gurnet Road right up until you get to the actual Gurnet, at which point it gets named after the silly English king.
The differences are minimal, however. What you have here is about 5 miles of sand road, as bumpy as a golf ball, and probably the best coastal scenery in non-Cape Massachusetts. 4WD only, at least once you get to the bridge.
You can very easily pull over on this road somewhere and, if you see no approaching headlights, be pretty sure that the closest person to you would have to swim across Duxbury Bay to say "hello."
Bournedale Road, Bourne
There is no truth to the story that "Bournedale" is an Algonquian word for "Shortcut." That may have been made up by a Bournedale-area website content generator guy.
Other than a few dozen houses, Bournedale Road is uninhabited. It's little more than some gorgeous scenery, and a way for Buzzards Bay and Wareham residents to get home from Route 3 without messing around on the Scenic Highway.
This road can be fairly busy at certain times of day, but you can have it to yourself if you pick your spots.
This is a terrible road to train a teen driver on. It winds a lot, has numerous high-angle descending S curves and is lined with sofa-sized boulders right at the road's edge. It isn't a very challenging road, but it is very unforgiving.
Added bonus: The Buzzards Bay end of it has a farm stand and a horse farm.
West Wind Shores, Plymouth
Not a lot of people know about this area, as there is really no reason for anyone to use it. "If you ain't from here, you don't come here" applies to this tiny Plymouth village.
Essentially all of Plymouth 1) west of Cedarville, 2 ) south of The Ponds Of Plymouth, 3) east of Wareham and 4) north of the village of Buzzards Bay, it's a unique spot on a political map. You can fire a gun from certain spots in the area and have it be heard in 4 towns, 3 regions and 2 counties.
West Wind Shores is fed by what is either Bourne or Plymouth Road, depending on what town you're in. There are some side roads which veer off into extreme southern Plymouth's lake region.
Where the mentioned-earlier Bournedale Road is a shortcut which Wareham and Buzzards Bay people use to skip the main road traffic when coming and going from Route 3, West Wind Shores is what they use when traffic is bad enough to snarl up Bournedale Road.
If you're reading this to find a place to illegally dump a sofa, this is a bad spot. The road, perhaps owing to her shortcut status, is busier than it should be.
However, once you got the sofa off the road and into the woods a few dozen yards, even God might have trouble finding you.
Just be careful that the locals don't see you... you can get a smack for that.
Glen Charlie Road/Agawam Road, Wareham
It is somewhat interesting to note that of the first four or five roads we mentioned, only Duxbury's contribution is not in a fairly linear run of roads, separated by mere meters of forest.
West Wind Shores, Bournedale Road, the College Pond Roads and Agawam Road are really only kept apart by there being no real need for a shortcut from an isolated Plymouth lakes village to an isolated Wareham one. They wouldn't be isolated if they cut out a road to them, right?
Some people, myself included, even pay to be isolated.
The Myles Standish State Forest and her adjoining regions provide a great portion of the areas we'll explore in this article. It's the Swamp Yankee hinterlands.
Glen Charlie Road, while sticking out into the middle of nowhere, isn't that isolated. If you really need to pour some lime on a former human, you want to veer off onto Agawam Road.
I have no idea who Glen Charlie is/was. I know the road is named after Glen Charlie Pond, which used to just be called Glen Pond. If you know, hit us up in the comments.
Lower/Upper College Pond Road, Carver/Plymouth
That's actually Barrett Pond, not one of the College Ponds. It's off one of the College Pond Roads, so it's good enough.
These roads punch into the Myles Standish State Forest, and you can pretty much go from Carver to the Pinehills on them.
This one is the #1 seed if we break this down to brackets. It is one of or perhaps the only road that goes through the seasonally uninhabited MSSF region. The MSSF makes neighboring towns like Plympton or Freetown look like the lights of Paris.
There are probably some serial killers in the region who have buried two or three generations of victims in this area.
This is as much road as you can have to yourself in Eastern Massachusetts, to my knowledge. It would be awesome for a very brief and hotly-contested NASCAR race. I might have to make some calls.
Old Indian Trail, Marion
This road isn't that long, but it does have the look that we were seeking. I was creeped out driving down it, and it was 2 in the afternoon. There was definitely a chance of Yeti Attack on this street.
There is no Young Indian Trail in Marion, or anywhere that I'm aware of. That might be in regular India.
This was our bumpiest road, and you wouldn't want to try it with an open beer or mixed drink. It's not the road to try in a Dodge Stratus. There were a few potholes on this road in which, if it rained, you could float a battleship around. If your girl isn't having any nonsense and you both know it, this road will at least bounce her around a bit. You gotta take what you can get sometimes, player.
Fortunately, we only needed to go 20 yards from the last house on the street to get the shot above. We went deeper, but that shot did the trick.
Quanapoag Road, Freetown/ Braley Hill Road, Lakeville
There's actually a road or two between Q Road and Braley Hill Road, but the differences will only matter to locals.
This is actually a very nice drive through some beautiful Lakes country. If you're here looking for nice country drives as opposed to somewhere to get rid of a refrigerator, you can do a lot worse. I intend to return with a camera next October, during foliage season.
After researching this project- which for some time had the title Where To Bury A Body In Eastern Massachusetts- one thought kept hitting me. Whitey Bulger used to dump bodies on the banks of the Neponset River. He was about 100 yards from one of America's main highways. He must have been able sit on his own balls.
I suppose some audacity is a must in his line of work, and nobody knew the dark spots of the town better than Whitey Bulger... but we'd be driving 10 minutes in isolation on some roads without being 100% sure that we could get a (theoretical) body out of the trunk and into the ground without being seen, even in a Nowhere Land like Lakeville.
That's why I got into Journalism, folks. I just murder time. Mine, yours, Jessica's... whatever pays.
Lingan Street, Halifax
The lakes region of the interior South Shore has been used as a dumping ground by numerous killers. The killers that I'm aware of used the Chaffin Reservoir in Pembroke and Bartlett's Pit in Pembroke instead of the wastelands at the end of Lingan Street in Halifax. They also got caught.
This road punches through the swamplands on the south side of West Monponsett Lake. It ends at a former campground, if you are willing to circumvent some gates. It looks exactly like where they should have based the Friday The 13th movie.
I used to teach in the city, and I'd take my little Hood Rats out into this area for field trips. Several of my students, far more used to an urban environment, were nervous about being in such a remote area... even in broad daylight.
"This is the s**t where Michael Myers kills all those white girls," one kid from Roxbury told me. "Black people have more sense than to go to places like this." I really couldn't argue with him.
I used to date a girl from Lingan Street. "Date" may be the wrong term, as I do believe that she could barely stand me. She looked like she could scrap some, too. I'm probably lucky that I'm not pushing up daisies at the end of Lingan Street.
Thompson Street, Middleboro/Halifax
You know that you're in the boondocks when you can host drag races on one of the main roads (Route 105, nonetheless) in this area without getting caught or endangering innocents.
I don't want to say that I have gone out early on Sunday morning and seen crude START/FINISH lines painted a quarter mile apart on a straightaway here... but would you look at that, I just said it!
This road is also full of farms. It's a great place to buy flowers, as well as a great place to go if you have never seen a cow in person.
Much like that Camp Murder from the Lingan Street section of this article, this is another spot that I used to field trip my city students to when I lived in Monponsett. Even a genuinely dangerous thug student becomes a cute 7 year old when he sees farm animals for the first time.
This is a beautiful road for the most part. I just shot the scariest part of it.
Will's Work Road, Mashpee
I fished WWR off of Facebook suggestions, and we here at CCM thank the readers for their help.
We'll use WW Road (which I didn't feel like driving to) and this awful screen cap to illustrate a few things this list is looking for.
It's easier if you highlight "Will's Work Road" and Google up the map, but we can see enough here for the basics.
Isolated area? A beach? A marsh? No houses? Minimum expectation of police interference, perhaps a border area of two towns? Plenty of road? Chance of wildlife? In our coverage area?
Will's Work Road, off of Waquoit Bay meets all of those criteria. She'll hold a nice rank on this list if we decide to get competitive.
Oyster Way/Seapuit River Road/Indian Trail, Osterville
This is another reader submission, much obliged!
Oyster Way has a lot of the same features that Will's Work Road enjoys, such as a tidal bay, some nice road to work with and a lot of forest cover.
Working among the wealthy neighborhoods entails a certain set of risks. For starters, you have to get by a gate. Also, the kind of guy who is disposing of a washing machine illegally might stand out in Osterville. Calls to the police will be investigated promptly. There is the chance of video surveillance.
Added bonus: After burying that body, why not unwind with 18 holes at the neighboring Oyster Harbors Golf Club? Not a member? Hey, you've already buried one body today, why shirk at adding a bothersome golf course employee onto your tab with God? God may even take your side on it, there is little guidance in the Bible concerning golf etiquette.
Big ups for being the second Indian Trail to make the list.
Service Road, Sandwich
You could actually classify this as anything between Sandwich and Shootflying Hill in Centerville.
This one requires a Bulger level of testicular fortitude, as you are 50 feet from Route 6 when doing whatever it is that you're up to. However, with the cover of darkness, some foliage... may as well be the deepest, darkest part of the forest, right?
It can also be highly-used, and that usage can spike unexpectedly if there is an accident on Route 6 and people start seeking alternate routes.
This is a nice, safe road that is fine for teaching the teen to drive on. However, the people you do encounter there may be in a great hurry.
Navigation Road, West Barnstable
The Cape is dotted with fire roads, roads that were abandoned after hurricane flooding, Indian trails and service roads. The minor width of the Cape prevents you from getting too isolated, but it can be done... especially in the off-season.
On this road I visualize a guy with every possible sort of infraction on his driving record who just needs "Deer Strike" to win a sort of Irish Lottery with the insurers.
Don't let the name of the road intimidate you... it's a straight line. "Forward" is all the navigation you'll need.
This was another FB suggestion, many thanks! The comments around the FB suggestion include "I drove down there, and my gas tank fell off the car."
Collins Road, Truro
This was the stomping grounds for the Beast Of Truro, who tore up a bunch of livestock in 1981-82.
The Pamet Puma was neither caught nor identified. There were numerous sightings, including one by a Truro policeman.
Some people said it was a pack of dogs, some thought it was a cougar, some thought it was a monster like The Beast Of Bray Road.
He eventually just went away... or did he?
If a monster, mythical or not, roamed your road... your road is going to be on this list, my friend.
Bonus:
Not Massachusetts, but here's what Stanley Kubrick did with the Isolated Road theme....
We hoped you enjoyed.... here's some more Duxbury, Plymouth and Halifax , below...
via Kerri Yanovitch Smith
Did we leave any roads out that deserve to be on this list? Let us know!
Gas used to cost a dollar a gallon, but that was a couple of two-term Presidents ago.
There's not much we here at CCM can do about that. Heck, there's not much that BArry and George Dubya could do about it, either. Both of the last two Presidents made their run at the $4 mark, and while Bush has the overall Highest Price Ever title, Barry has never had gas as low as Bush saw it (either before 9/11 or after the economy collapsed on him in 2008-2009). Elephant or Donkey, the Oil Man s gonna get ya eventually.
Of course, how badly the Oil an gets you is directly influenced by how hard you shop. If you cn save a dime a gallon and you fill the tank once a week, you save a buck or so (math skills, and brains in general, are not my forte). With 52 weeks a year, that's like $50 or something. Inflict that sort of savings on several areas of your life, and you can go to the Patrots game, trick out your car, hire a high-end prostitute... the world is your oyster, player.
What we can do towards that end is use a certain website to find the gas prices reported for your town in the last 36 hours. You can go to that site yourself (we recommend that you do), but we've done the legwork for you this fine Tuesday morning.
The national average for a gallon of regular Unleaded is $2.29, and the Massachusetts average is $2.18. A barrel of oil is going for $46.55, if you know any Saudis.
The cheapest gas in Massachusetts is $1.89 in Southbridge, the cheapest in EMass is $1.92 in Brockton, and the most expensive is $3.49, by a station owner who should be whipped in Newton's town square.
Autumn is here, and we're shifting gears into Fall Stuff.
When I was teaching at a Charlestown charter school, we had a class called Urban Exploration. "Urb X" was a code word we'd use for "our lesson plan got fouled up for some reason, so we're going to take the bus around Boston and show the sights to the kids. Give me lunch money for 8 kids and 2 staff."
To be fair... although I was most likely the one who had the fouled-up lesson plan, credit for the terms "Urban Exploration" and "Urb X" goes to a football coach named Mr. Cawthorne or something close to that. Left to me, the title would have been the less-smooth-sounding "We're gonna take the bus and drive around town for 3 hours," which program directors of charter schools probably wouldn't sign off on.
Some of my better classes were from Urb X, and I tried to incorporate the same spirit into my career as a shabby-website content generator. We did a bit of Urb X yesterday... although, since we went up Route 105 and down Route 106, it was technically Rural X.
As we said, Autumn is here, so we thought we'd trot out a fisherman's platter of what we'll be up to over the next few months.
I'm thinking maybe Lakeville, MA, Fall 2014
We have several trips planned to cover Fall Foliage. Ideally, we plan to catch some late September foliage in Maine, and then move down the coast with it until we are polishing up with Cape Cod after Halloween.
Marlboros costing $4.95 a pack in small-town New Hampshire has nothing to do with the frequency of these trips. Everybody buys 180 packs at once, Officer.
We also have a bee in our bonnet about stealing acorns from New Hampshire, planting them along the Cape Cod Canal, and turning the Canal into the Fall Foliage destination of 2075 AD or so, whenever the trees grow enough to turn Yellow regularly. We'll be pumping that article out after I interview a few experts.
Cranberry County Magazine has road offices in Freeport, Maine, Bow, New Hampshire, and Jeremiah's Lot, Vermont. We're analyzing more spots than Matlock, and we've got this Leaf Game on padlock.
In theory, we'll have a 4-5 fall foliage article run that starts in Maine in late September and ends up on Cape Cod after Halloween. Droughts, wind storms, low motivation and lack of money/free time may screw up this schedule, but we're looking good as of 9/22.
We did go to Maine last week, but saw nothing foliage-ish of note. The locals told me two more weeks or so.
Plympton MA
Massachusetts, especially the part of Massachusetts we work, isn't as known for her foliage/greenery as other parts of New England are. However, you can find some good 1700s stuff if you snoop around a bit and drive down the side streets.
Between flowers and foliage and even us stumbling through some dude's farm, we'll try to go out among the reapers now and then.
The harvest, formerly the occupation of just about everyone, is barely important now to anyone but farmers, craft fair hosts and the media. However, there is still a primordial recognition in most humans for the harvest season. At worst, it is perhaps the most powerful omen for the change of seasons that we have.
I feel it, and I can't even grow old properly, let alone grow cranberries. We're looking at late October for the hard color pics.
Speaking of which...
Buzzards Bay, MA
Another thing that we intend to pound into the mat is the local Cranberry haul.
The mighty cranberry is in the title of this website, so you know that we're going to represent hard at the harvest.
The compound in Buzzards Bay is just across the street from a cranberry bog, so we should be able to get this one done just by walking the Shorty out to the bus stop.
The possibility of us going inland and upstate to pursue non-coastal cranberry harvests is there, although I shouldn't need to drive any further than Carver or Hanson.
I'm a hack photographer at best, but even I can get some Ansel Adams work in if I snap enough shots at a cranberry bog with the sun shining overhead.
There is also talk of scooping a few buckets of cranberries out of Mann Farm's vast pile, dumping a few bags of sugar into a big pot, cooking/chilling, and then seeing how much cranberry sauce I can eat in one sitting. The goal would be to turn my skin burgundy.
Billingsgate Farm, Plympton MA
You know we'll be talking about pumpkins, player!
Pumpkins figure heavily in our harvest season, even more than the more ubiquitous cranberry. They are the premier decorative item for both the harvest season and Halloween, to the point where a great majority of the people who buy pumpkins have no intention of eating them.
We'll use pumpkins for photos, articles about visiting pumpkin patches, articles about decoration, Thanksgiving pie recipes, Halloween vandalism talk, and even excuses for doing vintage D'Arcy Wretzky image searches.
One thing we're kicking around is the idea of gathering (via a lot of Rural X, or from Facebook friends) a collection of pictures featuring the better Halloween displays. We'll do the same for whoever we see over-lighting their house at Christmas.
Halloween is important to us, and we also plan to run our Expand The Bridgewater Triangle article during this season, and perhaps explore a few haunted locations in our coverage area.
We also want to blow up a pumpkin with whatever fireworks we can gather up on our Foliage trips. This, and my idea to do a Diet Coke/Mentos experiment that involves tossing the bottle off of the Bourne Bridge onto the bike path below, is pretty much as deep into Science as we get here. I also have a great desire to film a pumpkin being shot by a high caliber weapon.
We actually are in preliminary discussions with a gun-range owner in Texas about re-creating the JFK assassination with pumpkins.
Me: I'm thinking that you get a pumpkin, fill it with Zar-Ex, put it in a suit, drive it around in a convertible and shoot it from 6 stories up out of a moving limo.
Them: Huh?
Me: Don't worry, I'll pay for the ammo, the pumpkins, the Zar-Ex and lunch for the shootist.
Them: How do you plan to do this?
Me: Don't worry about it. I can also provide the Kennedy accent for the doomed pumpkin. My girlfriend can do the Jackie O screaming. She's French, it'll be seamless.
Them (from TX): What's Zar-Ex?
Duxbury Beach, MA
We also will have the photographers embedded for any nor'easters that may come up once October comes around.
September and October have hosted some of our worst storms, including the Halloween Gale.
If we get our ship tightened up some, we'll try to get into some other towns for our nor'easter photography. I've always wanted to do a storm in Scituate, the Outer Cape, and on the Grey Lady.
I do have a press pass that, if I presented it to the cops and they called it to verify my vocation, would ring up my own phone. That should get me on the block.
It goes without saying that, should we get the opportunity to shoot a nor'easter, it will most likely be caused by weather conditions that will effectively cancel the rest of our foliage articles.
