The Sesame Street vampire, Count von Count, is obsessed with, well, counting things. This trait of the character is actually based upon genuine vampire folklore.
For millenia, the accepted method for guarding one's home against the undead was to scatter quantities of mustard seeds around the perimeter. As described in Matthew 17:20, mustard seeds are incredibly small, and there could be hundreds if not thousands of them in a single handful. It was believed that a marauding vampire would have a compulsion to pick up and count each seed and would spend so much time distracted by this task that he would not have an opportunity to ply his trade before the night was over.
Another recognized technique was to encircle the house with fishing nets, and the vampire would while away the hours counting the holes in the netting. One would think, however, that the mustard seed approach would be far more time-consuming and thus a much better method of slowing the blood-sucker down.
Interesting factoid! One wonders (or, at least, I wonder) where you learned this?
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