Tippy, Chapter 20

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

Continued from last week.

{D Jim was reading to us under the maple trees again. I remember he was reading in 1 Samuel, Chapter 17. 

“So, David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and stone; without a sword in his hand, he struck down the Philistine and killed him.” D}

I woke up to the most terrible racket. The Philistines, I mean the rats, were attacking the chicken. She was flapping her wings and trying to get away from them, “Run, Tippy, run!”

But I would not run. She was my whole world. I dove into the whole mess and started going after the rats. They were surprised, “Leave us alone. We don’t want you; we want her. We haven’t had fresh chicken in a long time.”  

But I would not run. I dove into the mess of rats, chicken and I don’t know what else. In a minute or so, it seemed like the chicken and I were getting the better of the fracas.

The chicken got up in the air and started dive-bombing the rats; I kept fighting the rats.

We got out on U.S. 27 headed toward the Great Miami River, on the west side of Cincinnati. Now I ran and the chicken flew. She kept looking back to see if the rats had followed us.   

When we got to the river, we started to look for a place we could hide, for it was still in the dark of the night and we did not want to run into any more surprises.

We took turns keeping watch until morning. After the sun had come up, we decided it was safe enough for both of us to sleep.

We slept nearly all day. Toward evening, we got up, took a drink out of the river, and sat down to talk.

“I am thankful we got out of that mess,” was my first comment.

“Me too,” said the Chicken. “If you hadn’t got messed up with that pack of dogs back in Milford, this would have never happened.”

“If you hadn’t gotten me messed up with that drunk driver towing the boat, this wouldn't have happened!”

We stared at each other for a little bit and decided whatever had happened, we were lucky to have survived so far and we were grateful to be together.

“OK,” I said, “Let’s forgive and forget. We have chewed up nearly half the summer. What do we do next?”

(Note: Not quite correct, it was the middle of June 1969 – Jim.

To be continued.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.