Zombie Giraffes and Pumpkin Eating Dinosaurs

Not uncommon for this time of year, I recently made a trip to a pumpkin patch to fetch a large gourd for my carving pleasure. Back home I'm use to visiting a concrete lot with several haystacks festively strewn about or making a trip to my local Vons grocers. There are pretty much all the same options in Chicago, but the greater Midwest is littered with legitimate family farms offering an authentic rustic experience...for a price. This year I was fortunate enough to secure a car ride to one of these family farm pumpkin patches known for their apple cider donuts. So on a rainy Saturday (of all the luck) we set off on our hour long travel to the farm.

Once we arrived we sopped through the muddy grass parking lot and through the country clutter store filled with all the painted wooden lawn signs you could hope for. The farm itself was pretty huge. To capitalize on the holiday crowds, the owners built an area called animal land that offered such attractions as pig races, a petting zoo, and a pumpkin eating dinosaur. Not wanting to refuse a pumpkin eating dino, we decided to fork out the $10 each to explore animal land. The petting zoo was pretty solid. It was filled with all your standard zoo-like animals plus a surprising amount of critters I have never even seen. The dirty feeling you get from gawking at animals in captivity was masked by the amount of dirty faced children running around unsupervised . The piggy races were complete with a pig punned comedy show. In the middle of animal land was a large orange crane like contraption wrapped fashioned to look mildly like an armless T-Rex. Every ten minutes this dinosaur would come to life, roar, pick up a rotting pumpkin with slow Parkinsonian like jerks, smash the pumpkin, and belch (much to the delight of the chillun-folk). I was hoping for a pumpkin explosion, but this Dino didn't have much jaw strength as it simply smushed it and let it dribble out of its mouth. It would do this three times and fall back asleep. The hilarity of watching the crowds gather around to watch the event was well worth it. Only in the midwest! My favorite part of animal land though was the two giraffes that we got to feed with our $3 cup-o-carrots.

Not wishing to miss anything, we tromped ankle deep in mud through corn and haystack mazes before heading to the patch. I ended up picking a pumpkin only a mother could love, riddled with scars and warts. Despite having a few children bully my pumpkin selection, I feel I made the right choice.