Kodiak the Kangaroo, who didn't want to give his real name, took time out from the Mephit Fur Meet to give Garet 'Legacy' Bleddynn a backscratch. The convention ended Sunday.
Rich Loftis, a visitor from North Carolina, walked into his Memphis hotel this weekend and was a bit startled.
Lions, tigers, foxes, even skunks, all wandering about.
There was no need to call the animal-control folks: these were elaborately dressed humans masquerading as members of the animal kingdom.
"I didn't really know what to think," said Loftis, visiting from Greensboro. "I just thought it had something to do with Internet chat rooms or something."
Loftis wasn't far off. The seventh annual Mephit Fur Meet (http://www.mephitfurmeet.net) concluded its three-day run at the Holiday Inn Select on Democrat Sunday.
As many as 400 participants from numerous states and five foreign countries spent the weekend wearing full-sized costumes (or just furry tails), buying art and books, learning puppetry and gaming or just communing with like-minded folks who find furry animals fascinating.
Organizer Christopher Roth, a 39-year-old travel agent from St. Louis, sat down to explain the event. He talked intelligently and skillfully about the origins and motivations of the genre, which those in the know just call "furry."
All the while, he was wearing a tiger tail.
"What furry is is anthropomorphic science fiction," he said. "It's any animal-based character in media. It's Chewbacca (of Star Wars fame). The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. It's most Saturday morning cartoons."
Roth brought three costumes to Memphis with him: a black werewolf, a white tiger and a husky. Together, the three cost about $3,100.
Roth gets annoyed when people criticize such an expenditure, particularly for a group that also raised about $8,000 for Tiger Haven, a big-cat rescue organization in East Tennessee.
"People who can't see us spending $1,000 on costumes think nothing of spending $1,500 on a bass boat," he said. "For us, animals are a very important part of our lives."
That they are. On Sunday afternoon, visitors could see a person wandering around in a full-sized kangaroo costume. Another was dressed as a Saint Bernard.
"We like the thought of humanistic animals," said Brian Miller, a 42-year-old dealer from New Jersey. "You have NASCAR people who identify with a particular driver or sports fans who identify with a football player. People here identify with a particular character or animal."
In addition to the costumes, the event also included erotica. Numerous dealers offered drawings depicting scantily clad half-human, half-animal creatures.
"It's not the main focus," Miller said.
Back to Loftis. Although he admits to being startled upon first seeing the costumes, the idea won him over.
"It's quite different," he said, "but if everyone were the same, it'd be a boring world."
- Jody Callahan