Nov 2, 2018 4 min read

It is the first of November, and there is no candy in the house. No delightful moment of reaching into the pillowcase to unearth all the crinkly wrapped gems. No little square Snickers bars to wash down with coffee; no little yellow packets of peanut M & M’s to rip open with my teeth and then pop in, one after another. No Sour Patch Kids. No gummi bears!

I allow myself two sugary days each year: Easter Sunday and the day after Halloween. Easter is for the stale peeps (purchased far in advance and left to dry out), and November first is for the trick-or-treat bounty.

But the pillowcases are empty this year, for two reasons. The farmer and I are in an empty nest now, the younger one having flown off to college. Even when the kids grew too old for trick-or-treating, there were other candy-funding streams, from school and parties. As the kids got bigger, the take wasn’t as great, but I could rely on the morning after for a smidgen or two.

The other reason we are candyless is our location. We left the big house in the small town for a little house in the big woods. I’m guessing that the goblins take a look at the long driveway, and the small house among the trees, and decide it’s not worth the trouble to walk all that way for a fun-size treat or two. Not a one of them knocked on the door. Nor did they last year, our first Halloween in this house. I didn’t buy candy this year, because we knew they wouldn’t come. Also, I cannot be trusted alone in a house with a big bowl of undistributed candy.

Halloween used to be festive, but that’s over now.

And then something happened to put some of the happy spark back in the evening. As I sat reading, a motion tripped the sensor light on the garage. Had a lone Batman or Wonder Woman made the trek down the driveway after all?

It was not a child, but deer. A whole herd of them had come calling. Drawn not by Snickers bars but by acorns, they’d come to collect their treat. I counted nine of them, three fawns and six does. The mighty oak tree near the garage had dropped its acorns, changing the driveway surface from gravel to seeds, and the deer were snarfing them up like Roomba robots.

One of the deer looked up toward the window, saw me, and then lowered her head to continue eating. The munching continued for long moments until, with their bellies round and full, they ran off into the woods. After the last deer disappeared into the dark, a fat squirrel ran in to scavenge for what was left.

I researched acorns; it turns out people can safely eat them if they’re the right kind and you don’t eat too many of them. Nobody would hand them out to kids on Halloween, but the deer and the squirrels seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The passage of time brings these moments. You’re feeling the loss of one thing, and then someone or something comes along that fills the empty space. A herd of deer on the driveway is not the same as cute kids on the porch, but it gave me a new way to look at things.

That last sentence was my poor attempt at being profound. To be honest, deer on the driveway eating acorns is a poor replacement for morning-after candy. Where are my gummi bears?

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.