STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

What do you call a hundred spiders on a tire? A spinning wheel.

What do spiders eat when in Paris? French flies.

Youngsters got some jokes and even a few bat and spider factoids, along with treats of popcorn, bite-sized chocolate bars and Clif Bars, at the Wood River Community YMCA’s Halloween Bash this week.

“We just knew the kids were not going to have the Halloween they deserved to have, what with the pandemic. So, we wanted to show how you could have a socially distanced event,” said Emma Paden, Bonni’s Greenhouse coordinator.

The pandemic Halloween party, ahead of tonight’s rare blue Halloween Hunter’s Moon, included an opportunity to make bat-like face masks out of old fun run T-shirts and even a chance to stick a chubby little hand into a tub of creepy crawly worms (all the more reason to use that hand sanitizer!).

Children crawled through an obstacle course of hanging balloons and hay bales in Bonni’s Greenhouse where they fought a ghoul with string spray, threw grenades into the mouth of a monster and took part in a sword fight using pool rollers upon exiting.

Only one child at a time was allowed through the maze. Everything got sanitized with a magic brew between appearances.

“This is wonderful, especially since so much else has been cancelled,” said Aneta Fosburg as she watched her daughter Sophia Fosburg cut out a mask.

Indeed, the Halloween celebrations that did take place were low key. One class at Alturas Elementary, for instance, dressed in costume but stayed in their own pod, rather than showing them off to the rest of the school. "They watched the movie "Coco" and discussed Dia de Los Muertos.

The costumes were fabulous, thanks to the homemade creativity resulting from the pandemic. One child dressed as a microwave, with popcorn inside. Others: Another wore a giant Pac Man head made of styrofoam while another resembled a 6-foot shark and still another, a banana slug.  And a few of the teachers dressed up as postcards touting their home states, including Kansas, alternately known as The Sunflower State or the Jayhawker State.

Back at the Y, in between bites of popcorn, youngsters learned that modern-day spiders have websites, rather than plain old webs. They learned that bats can live up to 30 years, eating 1,200 mosquitoes an hour during their lifetime.

“How are bats like false teeth?” one batman asked a youngster. “They both come out at night.”