Renard's Adventure

Eddie has a father-and-son pair of stuffed foxes, named Sherlock and Renard, whom he loves a lot.

Sherlock (the father) often goes with him in his stroller, and yesterday, Eddie brought Renard (the son) along when I took him downtown in his carrier, strapped to my chest.  Eddie was clutching Renard under my coat; he often carries toys around like this, and usually has no problem keeping hold of them indefinitely.

But yesterday, imagine my consternation to arrive home and unzip my coat to find Eddie empty-handed!  Oh no!
We had stopped at the North End Library to get out and play a little bit, and Renard left with us.  Then we walked through the bustling Haymarket, where several people bellowed about Clementines right by our ears.  (One lady seemed positively offended that anyone would not buy Clementines at two dollars a box.  She couldn't fathom it.  Convinced that the only explanation was that, inexplicably, we hadn't heard her, she heroically increased her volume still more.)

Passing by Quincy market, we saw the lights on the trees blinking a lot, and I thought there was a bad connection.  Then I realized that lots of trees were blinking, in time with music, and we stopped to watch.  Eddie was quite enraptured with the lights on the Christmas tree, which changed color and did "waves" up and down in time to the music.  When the show wrapped up, we walked down to the other end of the Market, where a truly immense tree was all lit up (where Eddie saw a tree last year.)  Then we said hello to some horses, waiting around to pull carriages; browsed in a bookstore; picked up dinner; and went home.  But somewhere in the excitement, Renard was left behind!

Well, Eddie was quite distraught to imagine poor Renard out somewhere in the city all alone.  We had walked a couple of miles, so I thought he'd probably dropped Renard somewhere on the street, and we wouldn't see him again.  I didn't want to discourage Eddie, though, so this afternoon we set off in search of him.  We retraced our steps all the way to the bookstore, where I asked if they had found any stuffed animals.

"Do you mean a fox sort of thing?" asked the guy.

We enthusiastically affirmed this.

"Haven't seen any," he said.

Well, no, he didn't (but he should have.)  He said that they'd assumed someone had left it as a present for the cat.
Eddie was overjoyed to see Renard again, and forgave him his AWOL day playing with Rusty (the sleepiest cat in Boston.)