Life in the Arbor: A Cotton Tale

By Jerry Travis and Jeri Travis

Life in the Arbor centers on Rollie Rabbit and his fellow animals that live in the back yard of a house in Sun City West, Arizona. Rollie is a smart, ingenious rabbit who tries to make his and his familiys life better. Their home is a stand of tall arborvitae trees that line the back boundary of the yard.
Rollie decides that there must be a better place somewhere out in the Great Out There, and he and his friendsFred Lizard, Millie Monarch, and Buzz Hummingbirdembark on a journey to find such a place. They encounter a number of friends and foes along the wayOlliver Owl, Cecil Snake, Fara Cat, Black Jack, and Kitty Rabbit, to name just a few. Their journey takes them out and then back to their home in the Arbor, culminating in a fight for the hand of Kitty Rabbit, and the realization that there really is no better place than their home in the Arbor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 19, 2006
• ISBN: 9781469106427

Jerry Travis

Jerry Travis taught high school English for over thirty years before he left the classroom for the first tee on assorted golf courses. In his spare time (when hes not on a golf course) he reads, keeps a journal, writes countless e-mails to friends and relatives, and writes song lyrics, essays, short stories, novels, and an occasional poem or two. He now has four novels and one collection of short stories and essays published. He and his wife Rosalie and their two cats, Dusty and Squeakie, live in Sun City West, Arizona.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The view from above, let’s say from the

side window of a commercial jet flying at 35,000 feet, would show a tiny walled enclosure. A nearly circular enclosed city sitting more or less by itself, although surrounded by increasingly spreading areas of new housing developments and commercial enterprises. It is the West Valley, west of Phoenix, Arizona, and the city holds about 30,000 inhabitants. Human inhabitants, that is. Senior inhabitants, that is. If one counted all the other folks living within its walls, the number would increase to nearly a million. And who is to say which of the inhabitants is more important?

A closer view, let’s say from one of the F-16 jets flying out of the nearby Luke Air Force Base, would show a city with charmingly confusing configurations—circular roads, S-shaped roads, U-shaped roads, cul de sacs—modest condominiums, moderate single dwellings, spacious homes, a dozen or so churches, nine green oases holding nine golf courses for the city’s retired inhabitants, a commercial area in the middle of the circle, and five openings in the wall for entrance and exit from within its boundaries.

This story is about the other group of creatures living in the city. And a diverse group it is. Narrowing it even further, this story is about a small family of creatures living in the back of one of the homes, a home with a towering privacy hedge of arborvitae on the rear of the property. The Arbor, as they think of it, is their home. And the hero of this story is a young rabbit named Rollie. Rollie is unusually smart, unusually curious, and unusually dissatisfied with his life in the Arbor.

CHAPTER 1

ROLLIE’S GREAT WATER PROJECT

Image2867.TIF

"Rollie! What on earth are you up

to now?"

Sara Rabbit sat in the shadows of the Arbor, watching her son as he continued to dig in the soft soil. First the front legs, then the back, dirt and stones flying back and to both sides in gray/brown plumes.

I’m dig— puff puff digging a ditch, he answered, pausing in his efforts for a moment. Whew! I didn’t think this would be such hard work. He sat down in the soft dirt and pulled one of his ears down and used it to wipe his brow.

Yes, I see it’s a ditch, but what I really want to know is why? You’re always up to something crazy, but this takes the carrot cake. His mother shook her head back and forth, wondering again where this strange son of hers came from. Was he a reward from the Great One or was he a punishment? Or was he sometimes one and sometimes the other?

Rollie Rabbit was indeed a strange son. He was only a teener and yet he was smarter than any of the other rabbits in the Arbor. For the past several seasons he had demonstrated his intelligence in many unusual ways. At least unusual for Arbor rabbits. During the previous winter he had shown his mother and father and the other families in the Arbor how to find quail feathers in the Arbor and out in the Gravel Yard. Find them and then gather them in the burrows, to use them to line the walls. The fine breast feathers were best. He showed them how to pack the tiny feathers against the walls and the floor and to use a little rabbit spit to glue them all in place. And the burrow, as a result, became warm and snug and soft and comfortable. They found out that even in the hot season, the feathers kept the terrible heat out, or at least some of it. Then Rollie made a feather door for the burrow entrance, weaving the longer dove and grackle feathers together like a fan. Like a circle fan with a springy little hole in the middle so the family could come and go through the hole and the feathers would part to let them through and then spring back into place.

Image2878.TIF

Rollie’s Feather Nest

Several days later, Rollie found an empty orange skin under one of the trees in the Gravel Yard. An orange had fallen from the bounty tree nearest to the Rollie’s home in the Arbor. Then he and his friends had eaten the sweet orange meat from inside and the grackles had finished the job until all that was left was a dried out orange skin, really half an orange skin, shaped like a round bowl. Rollie dragged it to the base of the bounty tree and placed it beside one of the magical fountains. At regular intervals, the fountain would send forth blessed water from a small black tube. Rollie couldn’t understand why the water appeared when it did, but he knew the schedule exactly. When the orange bowl filled about halfway, Rollie dragged it to the Arbor and in among the branches near the door of his burrow. Then he took water in his hands and sprinkled it on the feather door. The burrow right away became cooler and his mother and father and his sister Polly would spend most of the hot days inside while Rollie went on his curious ways, returning regularly to sprinkle water on the feather door.

Sara Rabbit again asked her strange son, But why are you digging a ditch, Rollie? And where does it go and where will it end?

It will go to the closest bounty tree and it will end near the edge of our burrow door, Rollie answered, smiling a small secret smile. And whenever the magical fountain pours forth, the water will run down the trench and into a bowl I’m going to prepare. Then we won’t have to go so far for water to cool our door or for drinking. Isn’t that a good idea, Mother?

His mother laughed in resignation. Yes, Rollie, she said with a sigh, that’s a very good idea. But it wasn’t all that hard to fill the orange bowl or to hop to the tree for a drink. You’re always looking for ways to do things easier, faster, more fun, aren’t you? You truly are a strange and curious child, Rollie. But you’re my very own strange child, so I guess you’ll just have to keep doing the strange things you do.

Thank you, Mother. But now I must get back to my digging. The magical fountain is scheduled for tomorrow morning and I have the ditch to finish and the preparation of the bowl. So I must dig.

His mother hopped back among the branches and into the burrow. Rollie got to his feet. He hated talking that way to his mother, that odd formal language she insisted he use. He might have said to her, I gotta dig, Mom, I gotta dig, but she would never have allowed that kind of talk. I gotta do this, Mom, I gotta do that. I dunno why. It’s just what I gotta do.

Just then he noticed his friend Fred Lizard bobbing and weaving from shadow to shadow along the Arbor, coming his way.

Ooo, ow, hot hot hot! Fred grumbled as he scooted along, bouncing from hot stone to hot stone in the Gravel Yard. Fred would stop every fifteen feet or so and do a little series of pushups, puffing and puffing with the exertion, then continue. It wasn’t exercise for Fred, because Fred didn’t believe in exercise. Fred didn’t believe in work of any kind. His pushups expanded his lungs and chest and made him look larger than he was. The idea was to frighten potential enemies into thinking he was dangerous. Fred liked to think of himself as a dragon. All he lacked was flaming breath. And size, of course. He always hoped his diet of fire ants would give him that ability, but so far it wasn’t working.

Image2887.TIF

Dragon Dreams

Hello, Fred! Rollie shouted. You’re looking particularly large and menacing today. What’s going on?

I could ask you the same, Rollie, Fred growled. What’re you doing? You look like a funny bunny ditch-digger. What’s that all about? Fred had a gravel voice that sounded a little like a pit bull with a cold and a little like a bullfrog croaking his love from a lily pad. Fred lived under the last tree in the Arbor on the south side of the Gravel Yard. Rollie’s burrow was in among the roots of the fourth tree in the Arbor, just off the middle of the Gravel Yard.

It’s my latest project, he told Fred as Fred plumped himself down in the shade near where Rollie was digging. I want to get water to my parents’ home. You know, for cooling and drinking. But I can’t talk to you right now. I gotta get this done by tomorrow morning.

You just never know when to say when, do ya, kid? Fred heaved a gravelly sigh and regarded his young friend Rollie. I’ve lived in the Arbor for some time now and you’re the first rabbit, the first anybody, who ever had so many little projects going. Don’t you want to just live here like everybody else lives here? Just eat a few squares a day, take a nap or two, then sleep through the night and do the same thing the next day? What’s not good enough about that? You just don’t know when to say when.

Rollie looked at Fred and shook his head. Well, Fred, if I thought that’s all there is to life, I guess I wouldn’t even care if I got up every morning. I just know there’s a better life for us here, and maybe even a better place for us somewhere else. And someday I’m going to go looking for it. He pulled down his other