DUNMORE — The Tri-County Costume Donation Logistics Board declared a state of emergency Wednesday after volunteers at the former Kmart parking lot drop-off site received 4,000 pirate hats in a single afternoon, overwhelming the facility’s sorting capacity and burying two folding tables.
“We were prepared for volume,” said Dana Whitfield, the board’s Director of Secondhand Spook Logistics. “We were not prepared for piracy. At last count we have enough tricorn hats to outfit a fleet, and by fleet I mean an actual historical fleet. We could restage the entire Age of Sail with what arrived on Tuesday.”
The hats, most still bearing price tags from three different discount chains, arrived in garbage bags, laundry baskets, and in one case a wheelbarrow pushed by a man who reportedly shouted “ye distributions be over” before departing. Board officials estimate that pirates outnumbered every other costume category combined by a ratio of eleven to one.
“We got fourteen vampires, nine witches, and one very committed sexy traffic cone,” said Whitfield. “And four thousand pirates. The math of Halloween costume donation is, frankly, the math of regret. Nobody regrets being a vampire. Everybody regrets the pirate hat.”
The board has activated its Contingency Sorting Protocol, last used during the Great Superhero Glut of 2021, under which volunteers sort donations into four categories: re-donatable, craft-project-grade, “structurally a hat,” and biohazard. As of press time, 3,812 of the pirate hats had been classified as “structurally a hat.”
In response to the crisis, the board announced a moratorium on further pirate hat donations through the end of the year and unveiled a new public awareness slogan: “Think Before Ye Buy.” A pilot program will redirect surplus hats to community theater groups, historical reenactment societies, and “one extremely enthusiastic parrot rescue.”
“The parrot rescue took four hundred,” Whitfield confirmed. “The parrots, I am told, are delighted. The volunteers are less delighted. One of them has started speaking exclusively in pirate voice and we cannot get him to stop.”
Residents with non-pirate costumes to donate are asked to use the board’s alternate drop-off locations and to fill out Intake Form CDL-7, “Declaration of Costume Provenance,” which now includes a checkbox reading: “I understand this facility cannot accept additional pirate hats under any circumstances.”
Join the conversation
Load Facebook comments to read and reply using your Facebook account.