By 
Often when friends or family visit our house, they already know about the Waff – him being famous, of course. Some are even keen to meet the hairy fool face to face.
Some however, especially parents with kids, are understandably reluctant about little Joe or little Josephine going up close and personal with even this distant (albeit toy-like) relation of the wolf. I always say the same thing, though: “Don’t worry, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” And it is Gospel truth that Waffle doesn’t have an angry bone in his whole scrawny body. In fact, I only ever seen him annoyed once in six years, which isn’t a bad record by anyone’s estimation.
If you couldn’t see him though – say it was dark and you were a burglar with nefarious intent – he has an impressive booming bark for such a furry little squirt. It’s the sort of bark that would make even the Louvre thieves think twice about breaking into a premises in search of loot.
Moreover, Waffle also tends to enjoy pretending he’s annoyed, especially when we’re chasing deer out of the back garden. “Get them, Waffie!” I tell him, and he’ll bound into the garden like a heat-seeking missile, growling and slavering like a not-so-distance relative of the wolf. If only the deer knew he couldn’t hurt that proverbial fly.
On Wednesday of last week, as usual, I was working from home. Unusually (for this time of year at least), a big fly appeared in my make-shift office, buzzing around and crashing into the windows. As was his wont, the toy-like wolf had taken up residence on the sofa beside my desk and he too snapped to attention when the fly came calling. For my part, I paid the roving insect no mind, seeing as how it wasn’t bothering me at all.
Sometime later (minutes, hours?), I became aware that the fly was still in the room after it repeatedly buzz-crashed the window; as if it had never seen glass before.
Embroiled with work as I was I off-handedly muttered, “Get him, Waffie,” and, as if he was shot out of a cannon, Waffle launched himself off the sofa, tearing across the room in hot pursuit.
Now, I thought I’d seen just about everything Waffle has to offer in terms of faux outrage but when he went for this particular winged adversary, I was verily astonished. He whined at the fly and he barked at the fly. At one point as the fly buzzed up and down the window, Waffle tried to jab or smash it into the window pane with his muzzle. In fact, he laboured so long at the attack that I stopped what I was doing and recorded a video on my phone.
The whole charade lasted about ten minutes until, seemingly satisfied, Waffle vaulted down from the sofa and walked away licking his chops. Had he eaten it?
Curious – both at the Waff’s determination to dismantle his buzzing foe and also to discern what mess he had made at the window – I clambered to my feet and set off to investigate. But just as I was approaching the window in question, the fly once again buzz-crashed the pane and then went spiralling up towards the ceiling.
“WOOF!” said Waffle, appearing at my heels, his faux outrage still simmering.
“That’s enough of that now,” I told him.
I checked the window sill just to make sure there hadn’t been a second fly to which Waffle had dealt a Spock-like death touch. There was none.
“It’s not that you wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I said. “The fact is, you can’t.
