I’m sick of Halloween. I used to like it, but the sales push starts too early these days. When I was a kid, nobody thought about goblins and ghouls until about Oct. 27. I even got a Halloween-themed news release from the National Wildlife Federation. (Oh, well, I’m obviously a whore; I’m using it). It’s about animals that suck your blood, including vampire bats and such quotidian pests as leeches, bed bugs and mosquitoes.

The release also describes exotic creatures like the vampire finches of the Galapagos Islands. We’re told that these nasty little fuckers supplement their usual diet of seeds and insects with the blood of other birds, usually the blue-footed booby. (Keep reading; you’ll understand why they call this stupid bird the “booby.”) The vampire finch pecks a hole in the booby’s flesh to drink the larger bird’s blood. “Strangely, the boobies hardly seem to notice,” according to the release.  Yo, Booby. Wake up, man. 

Of course, this is nothing compared to the Candiru catfish of South America. I’ll let the NWF tell you the rest: “Some [Candiru] species actually burrow inside the bodies of their prey, leaving a wound that looks like a bullet hole.  Once inside they suck blood from the internal organs. This is the fish that gained international fame recently when one swam up a man’s penis, where it fed for several days before having to be surgically removed.  Few things are more horrifying than even the thought of that!” No shit.

Oh yeah, the web site is www.nwf.org.