'I Saw a Cow Chained to a Fence': Surprisingly Grim Yelp Reviews of Pumpkin Patches 

Welcome to Grim Yelp Reviews, a regular feature where we share people’s worst experiences at the worst places. This week: five little pumpkins sitting on a gate. Rotting and filled with mold and next to some neglected animals.

We’ve certainly established in this space that fall is the absolute worst of all the seasons, but it does admittedly have its charms. An entire holiday celebrating death! Beglittered skulls for sale at every CVS! Strangers handing your children candy, which you will then claim for yourself! And, of course, pumpkins, which taste pretty good, except in M&M form, and are moderately fun to stab into a fanciful shape.

You wouldn’t believe it’s possible to have a truly bad time at a pumpkin patch, pickin out your stabbin’ pumpkin. And that, dear reader, is where about a million Yelp reviews will prove you wrong. Never has a Grim Yelp column been so surprisingly easy to write, and for that, I am honestly not sure whether to be delighted or horrified. (Thanks to reader Jared for this emotionally scarring suggestion, you will be receiving an invoice from my therapist.)

As always, to protect the names of the innocent and not-so-innocent alike, we’ve redacted the names of the businesses, as well as the identities of the Yelpers who wrote the reviews. We realize you can probably find out all of that information by employing five seconds of Google magic. That’s on you, though.

Cantankerous Owners

A surprising number of pumpkin patches are run by people who are just worked down to their last goddamn nerve by the pumpkin-buying public.

Like, I’m kind of entertained by how across-the-board shitty this person’s pumpkining experience was, right down to the owner’s “anger management issues” that evidently interfered with the functioning of the mechanical bull:

You have to imagine there’s more to stories like this, but really, how much more can there be?

Pumpkins Sucked

In a slightly less grim vein, visually unsatisfactory pumpkins are very common at pumpkin patches.

This next place is allegedly cold-hearted regarding stuffed animal loss, and, moreover, “the pumpkins aren’t that great:”

Animal Cruelty

Also surprisingly common at pumpkin patches: horrible experiences regarding animals. Apparently there are a lot of combo pumpkin patch/petting zoos out there, and they are weird and bad:

Oh…. my God.

This is sad, but “I love to play with animals, eat them too” is certainly a fine and very evocative sentence:

Finally, maybe someone needs to explain to Yelp users that animals “burping and farting” is more of a design feature than a design flaw. If you will.

Pretty grim! Until next time… I don’t know. I’m at a loss. I’m sorry about your pumpkins, everyone. So terribly sorry.

Image via Shutterstock, clumsily edited with Pixlr’s Halloween filters by the author. Grim Yelp badge by Jim Cooke.