Book Entry 191 1988 Searching for Chip and Dale

          Everyone was busy.  Adam and Robin were out on the three-wheelers, Heidi was baking cookies with Justin, Larry was in his shop and I was vacuuming.  As I’m sure most mothers do, I constantly thought of my kids, where they were, and what they were doing.  I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen Charlie for a while. 

I stopped what I was doing and questioned Heidi.  She hadn’t seen him.  I went out to Adam and Robin and questioned them.  They hadn’t seen him.  I told Adam to find dad and tell him Charlie was missing.  I ran to the back yard and grabbed the pool cover.  I dragged it off the pool as fast as I could.  By that time Adam, Robin, and Larry had made it to the yard.  We were all relieved the pool was empty. 

Robin headed out behind the sheds to where the animals were kept to search for Charlie.  Adam’s assignment was to take the three-wheeler to the canal and search.  Even though the water was out of the canal Charlie could have gotten in and not been able to get back out.  Heidi was searching the house.  Larry went into his shop to check Charlies hiding places.  I went inside the house to help Heidi. 

We had probably been looking for Charlie for fifteen minutes when Larry yelled from behind the fence, “I’ve got Charlie.”  Charlies explanation was simply that he gone into the orchard to look for two of his favorite Disney characters, Chip and Dale.

Charlie had quite an imagination.  I don't know why he thought Chip and Dale would be in our field.  He'd seen them gathering nuts on the cartoons so maybe he thought they were out there collecting almonds.  We were so relieved he found his way home, we didn’t care why he decided to search for them.  He didn’t say if he’d found them or not!