Chapter 158
Orange You Glad It’s Halloween?

October 22-27, 2013

The Thursday after we went to the Halloween Party, we read online that there were going to be Halloween festivities in Old Towne Orange. We walked up to the circle after dinner and found that the event was pretty well attended.

There was trick-or-treating for the kids and some of the same local vendors that had set up shop for the Christmas celebration the previous year. There were even hayrides, complete with horses!

The most exciting part, however—and by exciting, I mean ABSOLUTELY ridiculous—was the special Star Wars-themed show that they put on for the crowd on a stage they had set up in one section of the circle.

This was an elaborate to-do, complete with Jedis and Sith lords who were quite the stage fighters. There was even some sort of prerecorded audio track so that Darth Vader actually had the real voice.

I don’t really miss living in Orange itself in general, except when I think of these sorts of events.

At one point, they asked everyone in the crowd to put our hands out and use the Force. Tracy had to follow orders.

The whole shindig was laughable at the time and in retrospect, but it was still fun.

Back home, Crooky had found a new spot to hang out—under our bed. In fact, this is still his favorite hideout to this day. It’s just amusing that he wasn’t actually our cat yet when this was taken.

Saturday was the Halloween celebration in Irvine Regional Park—which, you’ll remember, isn’t actually in Irvine as its name suggests, but on the eastern side of Orange instead. We wanted to go because there were going to be special events at the Orange County Zoo and it had been a while since we’d seen all of our animal friends there.

Parking was a bit of a nightmare. Turns out everyone wants to come to these sorts of events. Once we finally found a spot, however, we headed toward the zoo and found the entrance all decked out in Halloween regalia.

As we walked toward the first animal enclosures, we saw that they had all been given pumpkins as treats. Each animal reacted to this new development a little differently.

The bobcats looked suspicious.

The sheep looked hungry.

“What are you looking at??”

The goats looked adorable, but that had nothing to do with the pumpkins and everything to do with their festive costumes.

Disneyland has made me LOVE goats. Honestly, if I could have one for a pet, I would.

Goats enjoy pumpkins too, as it turns out.

Unsurprisingly, we had cut it a little close with our timing when coming to the zoo, and we didn’t have that much time left before it would be closing for the afternoon. So we said goodbye to the goats (for now) and explored the rest of the exhibits.

The mountain lions honestly had some of the best interactions with the pumpkins.

We grabbed some videos of these big cats bobbing for apples and playing with their pumpkins.

[kad_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAs1sql2bbg” ]

Some of the little critters (like this lizard) weren’t exactly going to do much with their pumpkins, so the zoo staff decided to make them a little more festive.

This little weasel would not stop jumping up and down, over and over again.

[kad_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaorr_N7gi4″ ]

Here’s a peccary in a pumpkin.

And a deer.

This male deer who was castrated before the zoo rescued him always makes me sad because of his misshapen antlers.

We still always love raccoons whenever we get a chance to see them.

Still playing.

One of the bears had died between our last visit to the zoo and this one, so we mourned privately.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, this zoo is NOT large, so we’d already made it all the way around with time to spare before closing. Of course, we decided to pay the goats another quick visit.

After leaving the zoo, we wandered toward the area of the park with the train because we knew there were more Halloween festivities going on over there.

If we hand’t already bought our pumpkin, we would have had plenty of opportunity this afternoon.

Tracy blends right in with her orange shirt.

This hay maze was slightly easier than the ones where the hay bales are stacked high enough that you can’t see over them…

We did still hit a couple dead ends, however.

After successfully making it out from the maze, we went over and guessed the weight of this giant pumpkin. Our guess must not have been very good because I know we didn’t win the prize!

Tracy really wanted one of the prizes they had for the carnival games, so we ponied up a few dollars to do the beanbag toss. Luckily, it was one of those situations where everyone got a prize.