A story for your kids

Do you know why the government that's bigger than a city but smaller than a state is called a "county?" It's because every one has its own count.

And like most counts, these counts are vampires. But they're friendly vampires. The count for each county (Count Ada, Count Canyon, Count Payette, etc.) is only allowed to travel around his county and is responsible for chasing away ghosts, Frankensteins, and other monsters. When a count dies, the county commissioners get together and pick a new count, who moves into the secret hidden castle that you might be able to find on Google Maps if you look hard.

This is true in every state except Louisiana (where the French settlers entrusted supernatural defense to priests, hence "parishes") and Alaska (vampires like to live there because of the long nights in the winter, so they have whole colonies of friendly vampires who live in underground burrows, so the counties are replaced by "boroughs").