In this chap­ter, the nar­ra­tive presents a vivid and play­ful per­spec­tive of a baby buf­fa­lo at the Elm­wood Park Zoo, which inad­ver­tent­ly sets up the con­text for an encounter with a young boy named Jef­frey Magee. The baby buf­fa­lo expe­ri­ences dai­ly life at the zoo, enjoy­ing moth­er’s milk and get­ting famil­iar­ized with a pecu­liar creature—Jeffrey—who begins to appear in its envi­ron­ment. Each morn­ing unfolds with the buf­fa­lo antic­i­pat­ing the sight of Jef­frey, who, unlike its moth­er, offers car­rots. Their inter­ac­tions con­sist of nuz­zling, but one day, Jef­frey falls and falls silent, prompt­ing a con­cerned old man to come across the scene.

The old man is star­tled to find the injured boy near the buf­fa­lo pen and quick­ly takes action, lift­ing Jef­frey into his pick­up truck. Although he knows he should seek med­ical help, the old man instinc­tive­ly dri­ves back to the band shell, where he care­ful­ly lays Jef­frey in a stor­age room filled with base­ball equip­ment. He takes off his jack­et to cov­er Jef­frey, who is breath­ing but bare­ly con­scious. The touch­ing moment unfolds as old man Grayson expe­ri­ences the gen­tle, yet unfa­mil­iar sen­sa­tions of car­ing for a child. Jef­frey regains some aware­ness and asks where he is, lead­ing to a brief intro­duc­tion between the two.

As Grayson pre­pares some food for Jef­frey, they engage in con­ver­sa­tion. Jef­frey shares how he got his scrapes from hid­ing in the woods, which was a response to some “Wds.” Ask­ing for a favor, Jef­frey requests Grayson to get him some but­ter­scotch Krimpets, express­ing a child­like enthu­si­asm despite his sit­u­a­tion. In a moment of curios­i­ty, Grayson asks Jef­frey about his liv­ing arrange­ments, learn­ing that he is dis­placed and used to live on Sycamore Street. The exchange reveals their bond deep­en­ing as they share a laugh over Jeffrey’s buf­fa­lo-like smell, lead­ing Grayson to humor­ous­ly relent and agree to fetch the request­ed Krimpets. This chap­ter serves as a piv­otal moment of con­nec­tion between the two char­ac­ters amid their respec­tive strug­gles.