There are villains out there of infinitely greater consequence than the one I’m about to describe, and the news of late teems with them. But surely we still have the levity, and the taste buds, to look past the White House and beyond Hollywood and tremble before a lesser boogeyman.

Boogeything, really, because I’m talking about a flavor and not a figure, a scent instead of a gent. Lock the refrigerator, bolt the cupboards and barricade the pantry. Pumpkin spice is here.

And there. And everywhere. This is fall, after all, and that’s when we’re awash in pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin spice cereal, pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin spice doughnuts. They used to stage their invasion on the cusp of Halloween. Now they barely wait for September to take over the world.

One day we’re still catching the faint perfume of Coppertone on summer-bronzed arms; the next we’re trapped, aromatically speaking, inside an enormous orange gourd. It happens that quickly, that insidiously: a zombie apocalypse, if the zombies wore nutmeg cologne. And it really must stop.