sad vlad

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Goosebumps with Sad Vlad

 Sad Vlad, so sad. A vegetarian vampire for 400 years, so boring. A life of pale skin darkness, so pallid.  And because Vlad is a vegetarian, he doesn't consume human blood but rather the blood of trees, the sap that flows through the phloem and xylem of woody vascular plants. Yes, trees. He's a sapsucker, so anemic.

With candles aglow, the camp kids of Monster! Monster! Day Camp went to visit him in his crypt (Ijams basement) laid out on his cold slab (storage shelf) and took him a present, a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's, the champagne of artificial tree blood, which he promptly slurped, so so sweet. 

Vlad asked the camp kids to learn how to identify his four favorite sappy trees: sweetgum, sassafras, tuliptree and, of course, sugar maple. Yum! And yes, Sad Vlad does enjoy a good stack of pancakes, even Eggos. He's not a vegan.

Not everything in nature that seems like a monster, be it spider, snake, wolf, bat, hawk, crawdad, vulture or creepy, crawly millipede, is a monster. Some things just live quietly in the dark and sip sap, so like a cicada.

Photos by Jill Sublett and Sammi Stoklosa. 

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