Shaffer:  The men arrived toting crocks of wild boar gravy, trays of deer quesadilla and plastic tubs of kangaroo meat.

Shaffer:  When he was 20, Dalton Windley fetched a .22-caliber rifle from his car, aimed it from the hip and fired a single shot at Glenn Brame from about 150 yards, catching the young man in the neck. Those few seconds of wildness got him a life sentence in prison.

Shaffer:  Five days a week, Francis "Mac" McRackan swings an 86-year-old leg over the crossbar of his red Specialized, pushes an 86-year-old foot down on the pedal and scoots his 86-year-old body down the Crabtree Creek greenway - 10 proud miles at a time.

Shaffer:  Next Monday, more than 1,000 students at N.C. State University will run screaming across the Brickyard, crouching behind bushes, ducking into tunnels, firing a blizzard of fake bullets in a weeklong, campuswide war between humans and zombies - all for charity.

Shaffer:  For 57 years, the tiny coastal town of Swansboro has feasted and hobnobbed around a skinny, bony, jumping fish that shares its name with the world's ugliest haircut: The Mullet.

Shaffer:  Weak, feverish, hours from death, young state Sen. William A. Jeffreys begged his family not to bury him in the cold, wet clay.

Shaffer:  Josh Shaffer has never begged before, never stood on a street corner and asked for spare change. Three days before Christmas, he became Wake County's 12th registered panhandler.

Shaffer:  For his Christmas play, Freddie Cole Jr. picked a convicted murderer to play Angel No. 5, fixing a pair of white wings to his prison uniform.

Shaffer:  Down in the basement, right next to the treadmill, Scott Steiner keeps the box he'll be buried in - a 75-inch casket made of poplar and pine, stained cherry and black, topped with a cross.

Shaffer:  When the moon is full, Diane Craft drives to an abandoned graveyard off Poole Road, clears the brush away from the stones and waves her crystal-tipped wand in a circle, asking the spirits for a favor.

Shaffer:  When people talk about LeRoy Jernigan, they recall how he always sang loudest in church, how he made the best Jesus in the Christmas play and how he always tried to get a laugh by quacking like the Aflac insurance duck. He was just 40 years old when he was fatally shot at Circus Family Restaurant - a random victim of a killer now locked up for life.

After all the sniping, the skunk jokes, the tea party bashing, the Obama conspiracies, the Art Pope conspiracies, the strip club explanations and gobs of campaign cash, the furious race for District 3 ended on a note of cheese-coated harmony.

Shaffer:  With history waiting and destiny nigh, Trey Shannon lowered himself into a car the size of a lawn mower, wriggled into a fiberglass seat just an inch off the asphalt, flipped the ignition and let the mighty 125cc engine whine like an angry mosquito.

Shaffer:  Skeptics doubted that candy-happy kids were really stacking up 50-deep at Scott Proescholdbell's porch, parading so steadily to his doorbell that his hand shifted from treat dish to treat bag nonstop for two hours.

Shaffer:  About seven years ago, the city delivered Joe Welch an oak sapling - a hopeful piece of greenery he could enjoy from the shade of his back deck.

Shaffer:  Omar Cruz scrubs down a bank of toilets until they're hospital-clean, leaving no trace of the sausage-chomping, Pepsi-swigging State Fair patrons who waddled inside during his shift.

Shaffer:  Michael Greene will never forget the first time he heard Bigfoot: a whoop in the dark he can only compare to the sound of King Kong screaming in your ear.