| Here's the setup of the second foray into marshmallow toasting. I decided to pit a Spooky Cat against a Ghost. After failing to do a good job of keeping the Handycam steady I mounted it on a tripod. This also meant I didn't need my wife's help, which was fine with her; she scurried off to ogle pictures of Brendan Fraser, occasionally informing me that the apartment was full of stinky, burning marshmallow smells and noxious smoke fumes. I cheerfully ignored her comments. |
| Originally, the Spooky Cat wouldn't stay up straight because the bent toothpicks didn't have enough strength. After yanking the base out, I just jammed two toothpicks in and let them poke out the bottom of the tin foil. It was a lot easier to prepare and the marshmallows wobbled no more or less than when they were on the base. | 
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| An action shot! Here I am arranging the fighting Spooky Cat and Ghost in the Toast R Oven. Yes, my arms are as thin as they look. |
| Our fighters are prepared for battle. I still had some issues with them wobbling around, so I put little toothpick tails on them so they'd at least fall forward when they started melting. | 
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| The swelling begins. It's amazing how much the light from the heating rods affected the filming. Looking at it with the naked eye, it didn't make much difference, but the camera interprets things differently. |
| Look carefully and you'll see that the Spooky Cat has caught on fire. I must have had him too close to the heating rod, but what fun it was to see it burst into flames! | 
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| The door is open in this shot to let the smoke out. I'm just out of the frame, moving in to put the flames out before they burn my apartment down. Bonus Video Footage! fire.mpg (36 sec, 1.76 MB) |
| My attempts to blow the flames out just made it worse. The Spooky Cat was just about a puddle of goo at this point. It finally burnt enough that I was able to blow it out and not have to resort to dumping water on it. | 
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| The final outcome of the Spooky Cat versus Ghost fight? The Ghost won by default, I think. The Spooky Cat was just a charred lump and the Ghost was still standing, not even all that swelled up. It's only on its face in this shot because it couldn't stand up on the counter with the toothpicks sticking out the bottom. |
| Here's a better shot of Spooky Cat's blackened remains. You can see that the Ghost had hardly even begun to brown. | 
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