Disillusionment of bootzamon

Scarecrows have been used for thousands of years to scare off crows and other pests in Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, Japan, Europe, and America. During the 1800s in Pennsylvania, German farmers built human looking scarecrows called a bootzamon or bogeyman. (So, that's where the fabled bogeyman comes from...)

But these in the picture look quite benign, like they've had a nice big dose of Xanax. I don't think they'll be terrorizing crows, or anything else. :)


Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
The houses are haunted
by white night-gowns.
None are green,
or purple with green rings,
or green with yellow rings,
or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
with socks of lace
and beaded ceintures.
People are not going
to dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
drunk and asleep in his boots,
catches tigers
in red weather.
--Wallace Stevens