When it’s time to clean weapons, it’s helpful to have some rags. Lots of rags. Ordinary rags that no one cares about any more to clean up oil, grease, carbon, and other gunk. Sometimes you want a nice thick rag to absorb stuff or to use as a drop cloth. Rags with grooves stitched into them can be helpful, so little parts don’t roll away. Sometimes you want thin cloth, to get into little nooks & crannies.
I’ve cleaned a lot of weapons in my enlistment, and I’ve always had boxes, barrels, or bags of rags to pick and choose from. I have never been left wanting for rags. Now, I honestly don’t know where these rags came from. And sometimes, I have found some… odd things on the ol’ rag bin. I find myself thinking, “this is polyester. Who thought they could use polyester to clean a weapon?” and “I swear this feels like underwear cotton” and “I’m fairly positive this was once lingerie”.
This of course leads me to the next question of, “Is there any policy that this stuff has to be washed before being turned in for use as rags?”
And the truth is… probably not.
Somewhere out there someone from the “furry” community probably ditched an old worn out fursuit to be used for rags. Fursuits are usually custom, hand-made things, made with care and detail, but they get worn out like anything else, and sooner or later the day comes to say goodbye and make a new one (or pay someone to make a new one for you).
People on my Patreon page know that I did some comics for a furry fan magazine many years ago –I’ve been re-running the story there for some times, for subscribers of “Sergeant” level and above (check it out for more classic comics)– it’s a pretty straightforward sci-fi action-adventure comic I did years ago in a science-fiction universe setting I created myself. To get published, I changed the aliens to various animal species. The project ran for six years and concluded successfully, with an ending and everything. I plan to reboot the story soon, with the original alien cast (a rough draft has also been posted on Patreon) so stay tuned for that project.
But while I worked on the story, I got to meet a lot of people in the “furry” community. Nice people, very supportive, and generally lots of fun.
How does a fursuit get worn out? By being well loved; let’s just leave it at that.
Support me on Patreon and check out the old “furry” version of the sci-fi story here!:
https://www.patreon.com/Coyote
(You may have to copy-paste; the “make a link” option through WordPress doesn’t seem too reliable these days and was never that great to start with anyway).