Friday, October 10, 2008

A Fenris story

Fenris had three reasons to like it when his pack stopped by my booth: a place to rest, water to drink, and Scotch eggs.

Take a hard-boiled egg, wrap it in sausage, roll that in bread crumbs, then bake until done. That’s a Scotch egg. And he loved them. My ex and daughter help out at the booth(long history there), the ex always makes some, and when Fenris started coming by the ex began setting a few aside, so he could have one or two each day. Oh, yeah, he remembered that.

Last year there were no eggs on Friday. Late in the afternoon they came by and, since were on their way out, just stopped out front to talk, and I noticed Fenris looking over the table with an odd expression(if you don’t think animals can have an expression on their face, you haven’t really looked). The chihuahuas were in the booth, but he didn’t pay much attention to other canines(“You are not worthy of my attention”) so it wasn’t that. It finally hit me what the trouble was; I leaned over the table and said “Fenris, there are no Scotch eggs today.” Oh, God, the look he had. “There’ll be some tomorrow, and some are just for you.”

“But what about TODAY!? I was looking forward to it all DAY!”

“None today, but you get some tomorrow.”

That was one seriously disappointed critter.

Next day they came by for a usual stop, and soon as I saw them coming got an egg out. Fenris came to the end of the table and I told him “Yeah, we’ve got it for you today!”

“WHERE?”

Tossed it to him and chomp-chomp, it was gone. Much happier. He got another before they left, and made it known we were forgiven for Friday.


Another comes to mind:
Fenris was one of the worst beggers I’ve ever seen. Take a 100+ pound wolf, in fine health, and imagine it managing to look hungry, downright starved, at you. “You’ve got food, and I’m starving, can I have a bite?” Etc. He was also sneaky. One Sunday we had a jar of cookies on a table, and Cassie- the daughter of the human part of the pack- took off the lid.

Fenris was sitting just behind her left leg, watching. Waiting.

She lifted the lid, took out a cookie.

He tensed just a touch.

She took out a cookie and held it aside as the replaced the lid.

And he reared forward and up and snapped off the entire cookie outside her fingers.

He’s sitting licking his chops when Cassie looks around and says “Hey!” And he just looked at her, “Do it again.” Pretty much a command. But he didn’t get the next one.

5 comments:

Mattexian said...

Cassie should be very happy that he didn't try to live up to his namesake-- she's have had no hand afterwards!

Firehand said...

Over all the times he was out there, with people and dogs and the occasional cat and ferret all over, I never saw him act aggressively toward anything or anyone.

However, he could snatch a bite with you feeling nothing but his whiskers brushing your hand.

Anonymous said...

It sounds as though Fenris was a true gentleman. Just hearing a story about him, I feel attached. Hell, I miss him and I didn't have the pleasure of hugging him.

Anonymous said...

Mark, thank you for that story, I had forgotten all about the cookie. I have so many happy memories--funny stories from the medieval fair with him. The one story that was a recurring theme year after year was the fact that almost everytime I had ahold of his leash and Cassie and I would stop at a booth to look, he would very sneakily hike his leg on her skirt, and everytime that happened, she would have a fit. I always reminded her that he was just marking his territory, and that meant she belonged to him, course, if I didn't pay close attention, he'd get me too!

Gawd, I'm gonna miss him.

If anyone's interested, I posted a blog on myspace, more or less saying goodbye.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=35750273&blogID=439406166

For those wondering, Tristin is my grandson, and the tatoo that we're talking about getting is a wolf's paw print with the words Fenris and Luna written in futhark

Anonymous said...

Damn, not all of the blog address made it.....let's try again:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&
friendID=35750273&blogID=439406166