Fergus on Halloween
At Halloween, Fergus got to eat as many of my candies as he could steal from me – and that little rascal was quite clever at finding where I had hid them from him. I'd put them on the hightest shelf in my closet and he'd pile up the blocks and toys to make a rickety, swaying tower so he could climb up and munch away. I'd come home to find him sitting on the top shelf looking quite happy with candy drool coming out of his mouth.
I'd lock the candies in my toy box and he'd figure out a way to open the lock (frogs have very nimble and long fingers just right for opening locks you don't want them to open). I'd sneak in after school to open up my toy box and there would be Fergus sleeping in the back seat of the car where I had hidden the candy with a pile of paper wrappers shoved out the car windows.
I'd put them in a box under a pile of heavy books – Fergus would drive a toy car into the pile to knock it over and I'd find him surrounded by scattered-around books with a big sugar-grin on his face.
He was one crafty frog when it came to finding my Halloween candy.
I also got much better at hiding it.
I remember one year that I divided my candy pile into a bunch of smaller piles and hid them all over my room. I put them under things and on top of things, locked away in my toy box, and hidden under my socks. (and who would think to go in the sock drawer to find candy?)
I put the nut candy up high, I put the toffee candy in my special hiding place in a locked box (I really wanted the toffee candy for myself) and I put the little red cinnamon hearts in a place where Fergus could find them because I didn't like those hot-tasting little candies.
But Fertus loved them. Fergus liked spicy food a lot and he really liked those bright red Halloween candies. So he ate the bag. He didn't leave one for me, not one. The entire massive bag of spicy, red candies disappeared into that silly frog's bulging stomach.
If you've ever had one of these candies, you know that the red colour comes off in your hand if your hand is wet. There's some kind of paint or dye on the candy to make it red and it's kind of ucky stuff. Fergus didn't care – his hands were red, his mouth was red – everything was red where he had touched the candy.
You have to understand that frogs are kind of wet creatures. Every inside part of them is dampish. They like it that way. Their skin isn't dampish but the insides of them really are. That's why they live in water a lot of the time – to keep their insides dampish.
Anyway. Fergus ate all that red candy. The red candy melted inside Fergus. The red dye that comes off in your hand came off in Fergus' insides and turned the inside of Fergus really, really red.
But that's wasn't the worst part.
The almost-worst part was when the red stuff started to sweat out (you sweat too) onto Fergus' skin.
And turned my green friend a bright shade of red. Fergus was a red frog.
And that wasn't the worst part.
Fergus decided he rather liked being red. He always liked watching cowboy and indian movies and being a red frog, he identified with what he called those “red indians”. Now we can them “native Canadians” or “native Americans” but back then, they were called “red Indians”. And Fergus wanted to join them, to be a member of their tribe.
The movies always showed the Indians fighting the settlers so Fergus decided he'd do a little fighting off the settlers himself.
Now we're getting to the worst part.
Fergus declared war on the settlers. Well, the problem was there weren't too many settlers in my house.
There was only my mom and dad, my brother and myself, our cat and our dog. Fergus decided the cat and dog were settlers and made their life miserable. (The cat and dog didn't like Fergus anyway so that didn't change much – he was always bothering them). Those poor animals never knew when Fergus was going to drop off a shelf, screaming his froggy war-cry and pounding on them with his wooden spear. His spear was a toothpick and wasn't going to really hurt anything but it sure bothered the dog and cat when they got stuck.
In turn, they chased Fergus around every chance they got and it seemed war had broken out in our house. My parents weren't pleased because the dog and cat were pretty upset (have you ever heard an upset cat howl and an upset dog yelp and bark? - then you know how upset everything was getting)
They told me to tell Fergus to cool it.
Fergus wouldn't listen to me. (Fergus rarely listened to me when it came time to stop playing) After all, he was still bright red from all those candies and he was having a great time scaring the dog and cat.
Now we're getting to the worst part.
Fergus made a mistake.
He had eaten some more of those candies (he had hidden the pile from me somewhere under something I was too big to reach) and he was even brighter red – and more energized because of all the sugar he had eaten.
He crawled over to the shelf over top of my dad while my dad was reading his newspaper.
My dad had a tough day at work fixing cars so he wasn't in a good mood and just wanted to sit and read his newspaper in his big comfortable chair.
But red Fergus had other plans. Not particularly smart plans but he didn't ask me if they were smart.
With a big, red, froggy, attack scream, Fergus dropped onto my dad's head.
Now my dad didn't have much hair left. (did you ever notice how dad's don't have much hair – it must have something to do with being a dad – have kids and they lose their hair)
But that didn't stop Fergus. He grabbed ahold of a bit of dad's hair to hold onto and pulled hard. At the same time, he stuck dad with his toothpick spear.
This wasn't a good idea.
My dad yelled.
My dad jumped up from his chair.
My dad grabbed red Fergus and both their eyes were bulging out of their heads (my dad was angry and Fergus was being squashed by my dad's fist).
Dad had his biggest “dad look” on his face (you know the one that dad's get when they're really, really angry) and all he said was “Fergus” his most-disgusted upset voice.
Right beside my dad's chair was a big old fishbowl. And in that fishbowl was the biggest goldfish you can imagine.
Dad looked at Fergus – said – go bother this fish instead of us – and plunked Fergus into the fishbowl.
Dad quickly covered the fishbowl with a big heavy book so Fergus couldn't climb out and red Fergus was swimming with the fish.
But that wasn't the worst part.
You see, Fergus got to stay in that water for two days before dad cooled down and the only reason he let Fergus out of that big fishbowl was because all the red dye that Fergus had eaten was turning the water in the bowl bright bloody red and you couldn't see the fish.
Dad took Fergus out of the fishbowl and made him promise to stop playing indian. And because Fergus was now green again, he agreed.
Now we're getting to the worst part.
When my dad cleaned out the fish bowl, the red dye had turned his special goldfish red. Instead of a gold fish, we had a red fish. Dad said that it would slowly turn gold again when the red dye disappeared.
But that gave Fergus another idea. (As I said, I always regretted it when Fergus got one of his ideas)
Fergus decided he'd advertise that he had a red goldfish and sell it for a million dollars and then he'd be able to buy himself a Fergus sized boat and car for himself.
So he sold my dad's special goldfish.
But the story of how he sold the red goldfish is way too long for this story - I'll have to tell it to you some other time.
Custom Search
