King Richard’s Renaissance Faire opens for another year’s fun and frolic in Carver Massachusetts Weekends between the beginning of September and the 3rd weekend in October. With colorful jugglers, knights jousting from horseback, and a 16th-century marketplace, including handmade crafts, foods, musicians, singers, dancers, minstrels, mimes, and beautiful wenches, all amid the peaceful forest setting of Carver Massachusetts.

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I was invited by the King Richards Staff to spend the day down with them photographing the fair. It changes every year in little ways.

As always my biggest problem was where to point my camera. First, you have the fantastic displays of costumes of both the actors and the visitors, who in many cases rivaled the actors who work there. People wait all year and travel long distances to display their costumes. These are not Halloween costumes but expensively made works of art in their own right.

Next, you have exotic animals, from tigers to rare birds that are rarely seen outside of zoos.  I met with Robert Johnson from T.I.G.E.R.S. which is an exotic animal conservation group based out of North Myrtle Beach SC. He’s a Senior Trainer at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species.

Robert first introduced me to Archimedes a rare Eurasian eagle owl which is one of the largest owl species in the world.

Next, he brought out Cheyenne, a Harris hawk. The Harris Hawk is notable for its behavior of hunting cooperatively in “packs” consisting of family groups while most other raptors hunt in solitude.

Finally, Robert brought out Ahren, an African fish eagle that has been raised since it came from Africa and was hand-tamed for the show.

Three times during the day King Richard’s Court meets on the jousting fields to see who the best knight in the realm is.  During the day they compete to show their prowess with lance and sword and show their worthiness to be knights.

Also during the day undercurrents of competitiveness between the knights comes out and in the end, one knight is shown to be a traitor to the knight’s code and suffers the foulest of fates. But you have to stay till the last show at 5 PM to witness the final battle to the death.  I will note the no knights were harmed in the making of this production but I think when one fell off his horse, he came close to getting kicked by the horse… So it was a close thing.

Also, the most dramatic fights are seen during this final battle so you will want to make sure to pace yourself and not be too worn out to watch the battle to the death with weapons aflame!  I will say that I thought it was very cool.. or hot, either way, it was well worth staying to the final end.

The green night came out swinging his sword and it was an even match till it became a flaming sword and the red night was hard-pressed to stave off the assault and was almost laid out but he came back with a flaming whip which put the green night down and the battle was ended. This was a battle to the death and the green night was about to give all. In the end, he loses his head over this battle.

For those parents with young children, who worry about it being gory, I don’t feel it’s anything to worry about. I will also say this is just my opinion though so please don’t yell at me, about how violent it was… 🙂

I stayed for the final big cat show at the end of the day and I was glad I stayed for it.  My only experience with big cats (outside of my Maine coon) is at zoos and the circus. In all these places the big cats are safely behind thick iron bars and I’m not particularly worried about them. In this show, they bring the baby tigers out first to start small and not shock the crowd by having a large carnivore on an open stage.

I was immediately reminded of a T-shirt I saw up in Alaska that said: “Get out of the car and join the food chain”. When they brought out the first adult tiger I was uncomfortable for a minute with the realization that there was nothing between the audience and this 400+lb pussycat.  I know they have a good set of protocols in place for safety but when they finally bring out Hercules who weighs in at 900lbs I wished for some bars.

Hercules is a Liger which is the offspring of a lion father and a tiger mother. I didn’t even know they could or would do that. At the end of the show, I was catching a few last shots of Hercules licking his paw when he stopped and seemed to fix his gaze on me. I was afraid to take another click of the shutter of my camera… This is when you realize it is only by the grace of God that we are at the top of that food chain. He is a beautiful animal though and it was well worth seeing.

***I received comp tickets in the performance of writing this article.***

Jeff Foliage Folger

Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage

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