We’ve said these things before, but they’re worth repeating.

Carry a flashlight and a cellular phone. Use caution with items unwrapped, homemade or otherwise vulnerable to tampering, like fruit. Adorn costumes with reflective material. Drive extra-cautiously through neighborhoods.

Remember chocolate and candy are potentially lethal for animals, especially dogs. And homeowners should make their properties trick-or-treater friendly; now is a good time to take the garden implements from the yard.

Every Halloween, similar warnings are issued for parents and children, like beware inflammable costumes and exposed jack-o-lantern candles. These tips, statistics about the increased risks on this night and the terrible cost – potential injury or worse to a child – is obvious.

Please, be safe and happy this Halloween. Let’s make the scariest part of this evening the costumes.