I got out of my unit two years ago and hadn't seen any of them during that time. Most of them are my buddies on facebook so they knew what was coming but only about 30% of the current unit is people I know, the rest were complete strangers who had no clue and really didn't care about who I was.

I showed up out of suit so I could have an hour to catch up and trade gut punches and nut taps with the guys I still knew. The moment I entered the armory I heard "Who the HELL is that?" bellow from the commanding officer's office. He was a lieutenant I didn't know but the NCO's surrounding him were all my old cadre. They introduced me and we had a couple laughs at my prodigal return on the eve of what appeared to be another war (I had been saying for the longest time that I wasn't coming back except for a war and this day happened to coincide with the week that the US was talking about striking Syria). I spent some time with them, and then tracked down my former team-leader who almost immediately nailed me in the nuts with a deflated soccer ball. Before I could get it to return the favor he tossed it away to his dog-- a blue heeler-- that "happened" to bring that day, the ass. xD His dog took off with the ball and raced around like mad. Clearly my team-leader had come prepared for the day, no big surprise since it was originally on his suggestion that I stop by with my fursuit. He's also extremely hard to nut-tap unless you catch him by surprise. We chatted a while with the rest of my buddies, then I ducked out went to my car on the far side of the armory parking lot and got into suit.
I returned to the armory and walked by the CO's office. This time he bellowed "WHAT the fuck is THAT??"

I doubled back to his door just long enough to lean into the room with a wave and a "Bark-Bark!" then sprinted deeper into the armory to track down my buddies. When I found my team-leader I pounced him with a hug followed by a heavy-handed nut-tap that he was totally unprepared for. Remember, you had to get him by surprise if you were gonna get him at all ;P

We had some laughs and I talked a little bit about the things I had been up to with my fursuit like go-karting in Reno and going to festivals with Kijani, all of which was both interesting yet clearly kinda odd stuff to them. Fursuiting really isn't something most guys in the military, especially infantryman, are going to be all that interested in. If anything they were more curious about how I could even get into it. That part was easy enough for me to explain (and all any of you here need to do is look at my gallery of fursuiting photos :P), but I could tell it wasn't really meshing with all of them. Still, most of them respected it for the fun it offers and found the fursuit to be really intriguing with the way the jaw moves a little when I talk and how well I could move and see in it. Plus, as one of them put it, "It just looks damn awesome."

I posed for some photos and then made my exit. I had one last stop to make and it was to see someone I love very much and don't see enough--my grandma.