Animal Stories

Tippy (as we called Ring Tip) and the rabbits lived in the backyard. The backyard was fenced and the rabbits lived in coops or hutches. The fence went to the front of the house and was made of hogwire. It had big blocks in it where chicken wire is made of wire but has small hexagon shapes. A Mexican who walked back and forth in front of our house told us one time that Tippy could jump that fence if he wanted to. This probably deterred the amount of teasing Tippy got. He never went out the gate unless Mama called him.

One of the rabbits was named Wide-High. He was a New Zealand Red rabbit. That means he was brown with brown eyes. The New Zealand Whites had white fur and pink eyes. Daddy named Wide-High that because he was as wide as he was high. He had been the runt. Daddy usually didn't let us play with the bunnies because he said they were not strong like kittens and puppies to be played with. Bobby Joe got to play with Wide-High since he was the runt. He also had a cat. Mama didn't like cats but she brought the cat home and let it have kittens. The cat took all its babies and put them on Bobby Joe's bed. Mama thought that was cute.

One day, close to Easter, a lady from the Express News, one of the evening papers, came over at Aunt Oakie's request and took my picture with some bunnies. We took the picture in the neighbor's yard.

Adolf-She. One day Daddy took us to a coworker's to see his fox terrier. They said every family where they lived had an Adolf, so they named their dog Adolf. They wanted to get rid of the dog, so we took it. We named it Adolf-She because it was a girl.