The legend of the tiny chicken...

Legend has it, that if you open your door on Halloween to find a tiny, quiet chicken with big eyes staring up at you, you will suddenly find all your candy missing...

Actually, Tyler did quite well with his first Halloween working the street.

His busy day started with school. He was asked to bring his costume. So at 7:45am, if you happened to be in the lobby of the office building that houses his daycare, you would have caught a glimpse of a little chicken toddling down the corridor. By the time I arrived to take him back home for the evening festivities, he already had a pretty good start on building his candy collection (they must have gone trick or treating through the offices upstairs).

Once we got home and finished dinner, the chicken and monkey were prepped to hit the streets. The typical scenario at each house (at least at the beginning of the evening) was as follows:

• Chicken walks up to the front porch, big plastic pumpkin tightly gripped in one hand.
• As parent presses doorbell, chicken points at doorbell and grunts (wanting to press the doorbell himself - even though he's too short, and doesn't press it hard enough when lifted to its level)
• Door opens, house occupant presents bowl of candy to chicken.
• Chicken doesn't say a word... just looks at big bowl of candy until prodded to take a piece.
• Chicken gingerly takes something from the bowl, places it in plastic pumpkin, then stands staring at stranger until directed away by parents to the next house.
  

Occasionally, the chicken would be stumped when told to take even more candy from the bowl!

Eventually, the chicken got a little braver. He didn't say a word to the people at the houses the entire evening, but he did try to walk into a couple homes. And at one place, he even tried to share the goodwill by taking a handful of his own candy to place into the candy-givers bowl.

However, for a little guy who didn't say a word all night, he came home with quite the bounty. Even Austin was offered candy along the way, but gracefully declined, as it wasn't in a liquid form.

Unfortunately, while Tyler came home loaded with candy, all his parents came home with were sore, tired bodies from carrying a monkey, a chicken, and a big plastic pumpkin-head throughout the neighborhood. (If you think the chicken walked the entire way himself, you are grossly mistaken... besides the fact, if he did, we would still be out there trying to make it to the rest of the houses!)

Overall though, my concern that Tyler "might not get it' were completely unfounded. In fact, he seemed to completely enjoy the fact that dressing up as a silly, poofy chicken got him so much of that good sugary stuff!