Off the Mark by Mark Parisi for October 30, 2023

Those cheeks give you away.

That’s a flagrant foul! That warrants a smack-down by the others.

If I dress as a jazz man can I take five?

lesson learnt never go trick or treating with a hamster !

George Santos’s Halloween costume.

Back in the day (1950s) my parents would put a bowl of candy out for Halloween with a Take One Please sign on it. It lasted the night. Just try that today! Kids used to be brought up with manners.

Some rodents are Cheeky.

Trick or treat hoarder!

That’s exactly how my chipmunks look after they leave my bird feeders.

Betcha there is none left if Ninja Sloth was there.

Chipmunk cheeks!

:D

Cheeky devil!

Cheeky.

Alvin!

Yeah, I wouldn’t trust a bowl of candy on my porch either. This is funny though.

There’s always “that kid.”

If this were a two-panel strip, the second panel would show a small bag on the doorstep and raccoon walking away with a bowl. :)

One Halloween I had a full bowl of candy to give out and got a call from a close friend about to have emergency surgery. I was going to be gone several hours, so I decided to put the bowl out with a note. It was completely empty, and since I lived on a cul-de-sac we never got that many kids. I just would buy more than I expected to need, since it’s better to have some leftover than not enough. I suspect the first child who showed up just dumped it all in their bag. We used to get high schoolers, maybe even older kids, as late as 11p. After about 10p I learned to turn off the porch lights, and if any showed up after that I told them I was out of candy. Now the city has a strict time limit of maybe 2 hours.

BUNNY!!!!!!!!!!!! Hiya Happyx3!!!!!!!!! :)

Or in his case, one mouthful…

When we encountered that, we would trade out all the candy we wouldn’t eat for one piece we would eat. I wonder still what the people thought at the end of the evening when there was all this candy they didn’t buy left over.