Scary Sunday

“Share loose hay.”

Good advice anytime, anywhere, but especially when joining others at a scarecrow-making workshop. Thus, the third bullet item listed on instructions handed to participants at the Mount Pisgah Arboretum on Sunday afternoon was to share the love with the golden straw.

But what’s the secret to making a scarecrow?

“Having never made a good scarecrow, I don’t know,” said Hannah Harris, 14, of Eugene.

Not easy, huh?

“No,” said the South Eugene High School student, who paid $5 to make a scarecrow with her brother, Zack Harris, 12, and father, Pat Harris, for the second time in three years. “They tend to be floppy and fall apart.”

But make one, she and her brother did. They took some black overalls donated by St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County and stuffed them and a plaid shirt with hay. It wasn’t exactly what Zack originally envisioned — a “disemboweled Farmer John” — but they still might enter it in Sunday’s Halloween “Scarecrow Contest,” part of the Mount Pisgah Arboretum’s annual Mushroom Festival.

The scarecrow-making workshop, which includes pumpkin carving, has been a pre-Halloween event at the arboretum for about 15 years, said Peg Douthit-Jackson, the arboretum’s events coordinator. Materials to make scarecrows cost $5, as do the pumpkins, with proceeds going to support the arboretum’s various programs.

The pumpkins are donated by Me & Moore Farms on nearby Seavey Loop Road, and the pants, shirts and hats for the scarecrows are donoated by St. Vincent de Paul. The hay bales come from the barn on the arboretum property.

Nancy Meston of Eugene brought her son, Quinn, 9, to carve a pumpkin. She also had her four nephews with her.

“My sister went to Vegas,” Meston said. “I got five kids, so I was like, ‘What can we do outside?’ They were all going to kill each other over video games so …  .”

Quinn, with knife in hand, wasted no time in carving one large eye and one smaller eye into his pumpkin.

“It’s kinda like ‘Crazy Guy,’ ” Quinn said. “Sometimes crazy people have one eye bigger than the other.”

Of course they do.

Not far away, Leslie Graymer of Eugene was busy helping her daughter, Graymer Berryhill, 6, and friend, Cassie Ericson, 10, build a scarecrow made of jeans and plaid shirt and navy blue pillowcase for a head. They first named it “Bob,” before Cassie decided it was a “Barbara.”

To spark some enthusiasm, Leslie Graymer led them in song, “Stuff, stuff here … stuff, stuff there …”

“Stuff, stuff everywhere,” Cassie said.

“Can we do pumpkin carving next?” she asked.

“Gotta finish Bob first,” Leslie Graymer said.

What happened to Barbara?

(Cassie seemed to be saying “Bobe-ra” before it was all said and done.)

One of the more popular scarecrows Sunday was the work of the Stratis family of Lowell. With red pajama bottoms bearing Mickey Mouse and bowling pin logos, a white sweatshirt (that Dad wrote “Go Ducks” on) and maroon Junction City High School Tigers cap, the generously stuffed scarecrow also served as a pillow for Tim Stratis’s sons.

For a final touch, Stratis took a black Magic Marker and drew a face on the stuffed white pillowcase head, and had the scarecrow saying, “Boo.”

“Why did you write ‘Boo?’ ” 7-year-old Timmy Stratis asked his father.

“Because he’s a scarecrow,” he said.

“Then write ‘Boo crows!’ ” Timmy suggested.

Done.