Spooky mystery: A Cautionary Tail...er...Tale

So this morning Bernie went out to get the newspaper and...

headed back inside to yell for me to "Come see this!"

I almost never leave my car out in the driveway over night, and would never leave a car window open this time of year.

So how did this ghostly looking cat get inside my car?

Well...settle in; boy do I have a spooky story to tell!

I had spent the morning cooking up turkey pumpkin chili (oh unbelievably good...) and wanted to "treat" myself with some "camera and me" time.

Red Butte Gardens was calling my name and so off I went only to discover the Garden was in a decidedly spooky mo0d.

Ghostly looking flowers...

floated on chain link fences.

Bogie nest lurked overhead in the trees...(at least I think it was a bogie nest. It could have been some even more sinister....)

Frightening spirits floated through the oaks.

Odd whitish lights hovered around the flaming orange leaves.

Bat faces leered..

While a Vampire Bunny darted though whispering dried grasses.

(And if you haven't read the Vampire Bunny books by Howe, RUN to your library and get started. I dare you to read them without cracking up! We've been Vampire Bunny fans since our kids were young; I can't really decide whether the kids or the adults in the household laughed louder at those books!)

Bony grass fingers grasped at me as I passed...

While trees turned a strange shade of wine red and offered poison berries to me.

Rough purple spikes speared at me as I passed by.

The ghostly forms lined paths the beckoned me to come and sit a spell...at my own peril!

Eerie smoky forms wafted toward me as I walked.

A strange purple flower was seen all alone in a mulch patch.

What secret spell did it hold?

The Garden closed at five...at six they would re-open as a Haunted Garden with floating lanterns, bonfires and performers lurking to scare night time visitors.

Too creepy for me.

I left while there was still light in the sky.

I headed home, but my car responded to the siren call of Mill Creek Canyon.

I drove up to the gate that closed off the upper canyon from visitors. It had been a balmy sixty degrees out, but the snow was still thick on the ground up high.

Fall was following winter....

Isn't snow supposed to fall on the autumn leaves, and not the other way around?

Strange, but beautiful.

The red leaves upon the white snow appeared as though moments ago mayhem had befell this tree; the snow was as if it was stained with splattered blood.

The streams now raced through white instead of the autumn leaves that lined the stream bed just five days ago.

Everywhere I looked there were mysteries: did autumn leaves scurry in the snow to hide and cower beneath this rock?

Did a water sprite live behind this waterfall?

I thought I saw a small cottage beneath the fallen logs.

Where would this path lead?

The path reached a fork, now I had to choose which way to go.

What if I chose wrong? Where would the wrong path lead me?

Perhaps to trees with long roots that sprawled slowly towards me.

Or perhaps to shadowy bridges, so trolls reach up and grab me as I passed...

Oh dear.

The light was fading.

It wouldn't do to be lost in these woods at nightfall.

Returning to my car, I locked myself in and wound down the canyon and back to the edge of the valley.

As I drove the single mile to my house, the sky went from a uniform pale gray to a pink tinge, and then the entire vista above me caught fire.

I pulled into my driveway and quickly jumped out of the car, lifting my camera to capture this amazing sunset.

The color intensified with each passing second.

I wished that I had a wider lens to capture this entire display.

A car headlighted street led to snow capped mountains across the valley. All around me mountains were reflecting the sunset, turning purple and salmon red, yet I couldn't take my eye off the sky.

My next door neighbor came driving up the street, and slowed as she saw me. I walked up to her, asking if she had seen the sunset. She lifted her cell phone. "YES!" she said, "I just sent pictures of it to Oliver!"

I lifted my camera for her to see and we both laughted. In the back seat of the car were her two little girls, born just under 15 months apart; the oldest has just turned two.

"Have you eaten dinner yet?" I asked her. "I made a big pot of turkey pumpkin chili, would you like to come join us for dinner?"

She said they hadn't yet eaten, but the girls were close to errand running melt down and wouldn't make for very good company.

"Not a problem" I told her. "I'm going to bring you over dinner! You must be tired and there no need to start cooking now."

She said that would be great, and I turned to go back to slam the door on my car that was chiming that I had left my keys in the ignition and door open.

The chili was still hot on the stove, and it only took me five minutes to mix up some corn bread batter and bake it in my waffle iron. Less than ten minutes from the time I had spoken to her, I was at the door with dinner, including decorated pumpkin sugar cookies for dessert.

Husband Oliver was flying this weekend; we chatted about how nice it was that now he was based in SLC and would be home on Sunday evening. We talked about how fun it was to make up big pots of soups and chili this time of year. "Would you like some of Oliver's goulash? It is really good..we've had it for two meals already" she offered.

So a few minutes later I left with her with turkey pumpkin chili, while I returned home with goulash and settled in for the evening at home.

I guess I should have taken a moment last night to pull my car into the garage.

Or at least not been in such a hurry that I locked a neighborhood cat in my car overnight!

I don't know what the cat will say to explain why she didn't come home last night.

I imagine she will be able to come up with a pretty scary story about some white haired crone that had trapped innocent black and white cats in her car while the sky turned orange overhead.

~The End~