Bob George was a real seagull. No, he wasn’t my, or anyone else’s, pet. During the COVID shutdown of 2020, Ingrid (yes, the illustrator is also my daughter) and I spent a lot of time eating in the McDonald’s parking lot where there was a seagull who kept an eye out for discarded fries from atop a parking lot light pole. Ingrid started calling him Bob George.

Fast forward a couple of years. I don’t even know what conversation precipitated the statement, but Ingrid said to me, “Imagine you have a pet seagull.” Imagination is something like breathing for her but not so much for me, so I responded with, “Why on earth would I have a pet seagull?” Two things grew out of that conversation: 1) The personality for Rhoophus the duck was born, and 2) Ingrid made it her mission to exercise my imagination. We added Toucan Pepé to the mix and began tossing around story ideas. Rhoophus and Toucan Pepé had been what I think of as “corner characters,” little doodles Ingrid would draw in the margins of things like school worksheets and church bulletins. Taking notes during class lectures, riding out tornadoes in a Taco Johns, give the girl a writing instrument and off she goes.

At the time, she was doing dual enrollment in college while finishing high school and working part-time, so an unspoken agreement was made that I would come up with a story and she would illustrate it. As someone who requires more practice when it comes to imagination, this was a fairly slow process. But that’s exactly what I wanted to come through—we don’t all imagine the same way, and there is no correct way to do it.

Add a couple more years. When it was announced by one of Ingrid’s older sisters that our first grandchild would be arriving in late summer, another older sister started pestering me about what I was going to make for the grandbaby. The problem was that while I knit and crochet, so does my mother-in-law, which meant Baby would be getting a crocheted baby blanket from her. I also make small quilts. Unfortunately, so does my mother, which meant Baby would be getting a baby quilt from her. Pesty daughter said, “Write her a book.” And here we are. Available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.