Overcast and chilly here this early Friday on California’s north coast — on occasion, bright, quick rays of sunshine.

Costume holiday — one of our more-weird, and disturbing festivities today, All Saints Eve, or Halloween. A bit from the US Library of Congress: ‘The old beliefs associated with Samhain never died out entirely. The powerful symbolism of the traveling dead was too strong, and perhaps too basic to the human psyche, to be satisfied with the new, more abstract Catholic feast honoring saints.’

We’re alive to the walking dead.

(Illustration: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Head of a Horse,’ found here).

Or maybe soon to be walking dead, or riding a bike dead, or be the idiot governor of Maine. Life as if kicked by a mule: ‘A Maine judge on Friday rejected a bid by state health officials to restrict the movement of nurse Kaci Hickox, who defied a state quarantine for medical workers who have treated Ebola patients.’
Fright and reality.

How about black bear attacks?
A bigger concept-reality for locals, or anybody near woods, is nature in turmoil. In the backdrop of a drought, and a warming environment, black bears in search of food. Or maybe black bears just getting all-crazy, ‘stalker’ like and violent. The locals tend to carry some kind of weapon all the time to protect themselves, www.archery-den.com/best-crossbows/ seems to be a good site where you can find crossbows at a very good price.
Yesterday afternoon from NorthJersey.com:

The black bear that killed a 22-year-old Rutgers student in the Apshawa Preserve in West Milford last month was acting in a “predatory” manner as it stalked the victim and his friends before launching an unprovoked attack, police and state officials said in a release Thursday.
Darsh Patel’s Sept. 21 death, the first known fatal attack by a bear against a human being in New Jersey, was attributed to a “mauling” on the death certificate, according to the statement.
The animal that attacked him was labeled a “predatory bear.”
“The behavior of the bear before the attack was typical of bears involved in predatory attacks on humans,” West Milford Police Chief Timothy Storbeck and state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Larry Ragonese said in the statement.
…
The DEP’s Division of Fish and Wildlife determined that the bear, which did not appear to be suffering from malnutrition or an illness, didn’t seem interested in food carried by the victim, leaving untouched a sealed granola bar in Patel’s backpack.
An autopsy of the bear released by the state on Oct. 7 revealed the bear had blood on its paws and human tissue and hair in its stomach.
The statement said that the bear killed by authorities was the same bear involved in the fatal attack based on photographs taken by the hikers.
The bear exhibited “stalking type behavior” as it hastened its pace when the hikers tried to get away, according to the statement.
“The investigation did not disclose any sign of intimidation or provocation of the bear by either group of hikers” authorities said in the statement.

Another case, this one fairly-deeply sad, though, the bear was a grizzly. From a couple of weeks ago at canoe.ca:

She was the love of his life — and until Saturday, when a predatory grizzly bear invaded their Yukon cabin and fatally mauled his wife, Matthias Liniger says the home he shared with Claudia Huber in the Canadian wilderness was their personal paradise.
“Claudia was my soulmate,” said Liniger, speaking publicly for the first time since the attack.
“She was the woman who could handle a chainsaw and cut trees, and then she came home, and prepared herself, and you could go out with her, and she was the most stunning woman you have ever seen.”

Good grief — one of the worse-ending romance stories, ever.
And short-list also from canoe:

Last month a hunter in the Northwest Territories died following a bear attack southwest of Norman Wells, near the Yukon border.
Calgarian Rick Cross was also killed last month by a female grizzly bear in the Picklejar area of Kananaskis Country in Alberta while he was out hunting sheep.
It was determined the attack was defensive, not predatory.
In August, a male hunter was injured after a black bear he shot, but failed to kill, turned on him.
The man eventually shot the bear to death before getting to a residence to call for help.
And in May, Lorna Weafer of Fort McMurray was killed by a male black bear at a Suncor oilsands site.

Here in California, black bears at Yosemite National Park have been on the prowl:

The instances of bears raiding campgrounds and parking lots for human food are up by 35 percent from Jan. 1 to Oct. 19 compared to the same period last year- the second such increase during the state’s three consecutive dry years.
Officials say the heightened bear activity may be partly caused by the drought cutting the supply of berries and other natural bear food.

And, of course, our lives amongst dense woods here California’s north coast made national headlines this month, when a well-known local man died of a heart attack at his rural home in the southern part of the county, then was later eaten by a black bear — Humboltdt County Deputy Coroner Roy Horton: “It looks like he collapsed and died. The bear comes along and sees a potential food source.”

Meanwhile, back to that virus….