Cyrus

Okay, so, I posted a piece called “My Six Closest Friends” and I didn’t even mention Cyrus.  So he’s been grumpy for the past week.  (I suppose that he has a point in protesting his exclusion from the top six.  After all, he is the one I talk to most often.  They say it’s a sign of insanity to talk to yourself, so I instead talk to Cyrus.)  In an effort to placate him, I’m now going to write this post about him. 

This, by the way, is Cyrus. 

Stuffed Animal Person

I’ve never been a dog person.  (I’m severely allergic, plus they have an unfortunate tendency to attack me with no provocation.)  Nor have I been a cat person.  (Also severely allergic.) 

No, I’ve always been a stuffed animal person.  I’ve had stuffed animals as long as I can remember.  Bears, koalas, cows, rabbits, ducks, turtles, and a whole herd of plush bison.  

Everything from cheaply made off-brands all the way up to Gund.  I’ve even got a couple of Build-a-Bear critters.  

Replacements

I bought Cyrus as a Christmas gift for my cousin Bernice one year.  I chose to not wrap him until the last minute, so he spent the festive season leading up to Christmas sitting on my couch. 

We’d sit there watching television.  Cyrus became hooked on professional wrestling in those weeks.  We’d listen to Christmas music.  We’d converse, in that way that stuffed animals do with humans. 

In short, we bonded. 

It snowed that Christmas eve.  A lot.  So much so that traveling the roads between Portland and Mt. Angel were not safe.  So, my cousin and her husband didn’t come down to exchange Christmas gifts until sometime in January. 

Meanwhile, my mom had noticed how much I liked having Cyrus around, and so she went to Toys R Us and got me an identical walrus for Christmas.  [I suspect that part of the reason she got me a walrus was so that I’d stop stealing my little brother’s stuffed elephant Justin, with whom I also had a good relationship.]  And the new walrus was nice and all… but he wasn’t Cyrus. 

So when it came time to wrap Cyrus to gift to Bernice, I just couldn’t do it.  Cyrus and I had a long talk, and it was decided that we’d wrap the other walrus in Cyrus’ place, and give him to Bernice instead.  Kind of a switched-at-birth thing. 

Bernice was delighted with her walrus, and named him Aiviq (which is Eskimo for ‘walrus’.) 

So:  As a stuffed animal, Cyrus was a replacement for a living pet.  As a walrus, he was a replacement for an elephant.  And he had his own replacement in the form of the walrus who would go on to become Aiviq. 

Friend or Alter-Ego?

It seems that there’s an argument to be made that Cyrus is less a friend of mine and more an alter-ego of sorts.  I don’t see it that way.  And Cyrus certainly doesn’t see it that way.  But there are people out there who do. 

People seem to think that I make up the things that Cyrus says.  But that just isn’t so.  Sometimes the things he says and does genuinely surprise me.  

Traveling Companion

Back when Mom was still alive, the front passenger seat of her suburban was my main means of getting places.  And when her and I would go somewhere, chances were that Cyrus would go along with us. 

Whenever we arrived at our destination, Cyrus would wait for us in the suburban.  I can’t think of a time where he ever went into a place with us. 

But on the ride over and back, he’d interact with his environment.  He’d interact with Mom and I, and he’d just generally be entertaining. 

When my brother and I started going to science-fiction conventions Cyrus would tag along with us.  At one convention there was a late night panel about vampires, and Cyrus went with us, pretending that he was a vampire seal.  (Weirdo.) 

Cyrus went with me to a LEGO convention one year.  (I didn’t have a roommate for my hotel room that year.)  Since I have to sleep sitting up in a chair (breathing issues), Cyrus took the bed.  I wonder what housekeeping thought when they came into my room to clean and found Cyrus in bed.  Head on the pillow, covers up to his flippers.  When I got back to the room the bed had been remade, and Cyrus was sitting on top of the covers. 

Barking and Other Noises 

Having been born in a factory and raised in a Toys R Us warehouse, a lot of what Cyrus knows about being a walrus is stuff that he read in books. 

For example, once Cyrus discovered that walruses sleep for 16 hours a day, he started refusing to get out of bed before 3:00 pm.  (His bed, not mine.  I’m too old to be sleeping with stuffed animals.)  It was years after that that I finally was able to get him up at noon.  (It took six months worth of gradually waking him up earlier and earlier.) 

Another piece of information he got from a book about walruses is that the noise they make is called ‘barking’.  He read that and thought to himself, “I can make that noise!  I’ve heard dogs doing it!”  And then proceeded to start barking.  “Arf! Arf! Arf!” 

I’ve never had the heart to tell him that that isn’t the sound walruses make, and that dog barking and walrus barking simply share a name. 

But barking isn’t the only noise that Cyrus makes.  Sometimes he’ll meow like a cat or make monkey noises.  (He claims that he’s simply multilingual.)  Other times he’s been known to go, “Skronk!”  (He swears that skronk is a proper walrus noise, but I have my doubts.) 

Is That a Walrus?!

Cyrus usually comes with me when I go to my sister’s house.  One year at the family Christmas party I walked into the room with Cyrus tucked under my arm, and my cousin looks at us and incredulously asks, “Is that a walrus?!” 

I told her that, yes, he was, and further, he was my emotional support walrus.  She just kind of shook her head and walked away looking for someone else to talk to. 

Last year somebody I met on the internet invited me to a social function being held over Zoom.  Partway through the evening, she stood at the back of the room she was in and picked up a stuffed animal, which proceeded to cavort about and act goofy. 

Cyrus noticed this, and climbed up onto my computer desk and peered into the webcam.  Moments later I hear one of the other party-goers exclaim, “Is that a walrus?!” 

Yes, he’s a walrus.  Why is that so hard for everybody to understand? 

The Meta-ness of Being Off-Panel

Sometimes, Cyrus will go out and chase squirrels. 

Now, if you’re picturing me outside, holding Cyrus low to the ground and running after a squirrel, you’ve definitely got the wrong impression. 

You see, just like comic book characters have lives that they live when they’re off-panel and only occasionally reference when they’re on-panel, Cyrus leads a full life outside of my interactions with him. 

He can be out chasing squirrels while I’m online or building in the LEGO room.  It looks for all the world like his body is actually there in my apartment, but nope.  He’s out chasing squirrels. 

He also goes trick-or-treating every year.  But I’m not out there carrying him from door to door.  And does his haul of Halloween candy look suspiciously like the bags of fun-sized candy bars I happened to buy at the grocery store a few days before?  Yes it does.  

Birthday and Holidays

Every June 21^st, we celebrate Cyrus’ birthday.  Sometimes there will be presents, sometimes not.  There’s usually cake and ice cream.  (Even if it’s just an individual slice of cake from the Safeway bakery and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food.) 

And, of course, Cyrus also celebrates the other holidays.  One day I asked Cyrus what his favorite holiday was, and he nearly had an existential meltdown because he couldn’t narrow it down past three. 

In reverse chronological order, Cyrus’ favorite holidays are Christmas, Halloween, and Lent.  Christmas because of Christmas lights, Christmas music, and presents.  Halloween because of the free candy.  And Lent because not only is that Chocolate Bunny Season, but it also usually means seven meals of fish sticks and macaroni and cheese throughout the season.  Cyrus loves fish sticks.  

Conversations With My Sister

If Cyrus notices that my sister is on Facebook, he’ll open up an IM and chat with her.  (Well, first he barks at her, and then he starts chatting.) 

He also will periodically email her and text her.  (From my email account and my cellphone, respectively.) 

One day I got a phone call from my sister, asking if everything was all right.  I told her that everything was, although I was a little confused about why she was asking.  Turns out, she hadn’t heard from Cyrus in a couple of days, and she was worried that something might have happened to me. 

“Walrus Has Decided To Speak In the Third Person”

Cyrus also insists on speaking in the third person.  And referring to himself simply as Walrus.

Walruses Are Weirdos

I probably shouldn’t generalize like that.  That subheading would probably be more accurate if it read ‘My Walrus Is a Weirdo’, but Cyrus insists that he’s a typical walrus, so… walruses are weirdos. 

Cyrus has a bird phobia.  Which has led him to periodically collect scarecrows for the protection they provide.  His current scarecrow is a Funko Pop of the Scarecrow (from Batman’s Rogues Gallery) that my sister got him for Easter last year.  He swears that his ownership of this is what has kept him from being carried off by birds. 

Cyrus also has a weird affinity for clean laundry.  He likes to burrow around in it like a gopher. 

Cyrus being a laundry gopher 

The Official Apology

All right, here goes:  Cyrus, I’d like to officially apologize for my oversight in omitting you from the “My Six Closest Friends” post. 

You are, of course, obviously my best friend.