While they are in a restaurant, Baby Jim tosses his sister Polly's toy puffin into the hood of a stranger's coat, and he leads them a merry chase through the city.
Twelve-year-old Frisk Tilden gets the summer job every kid wants, wins a pool tournament, and gains the admiration of the people in his small southern town.
As snowflakes slowly come down, one by one, people in the city ignore them, and only a boy and his dog think that the snowfall will amount to anything.
In an effort to put the town of Gerbil, Pennsylvania on the map, the residents open up The First National Drive-Thru Museum of American Sightseeing and Clean Rest Rooms and stage a gerbil roundup and jubilee.