Flora Belle Buckman Timeline and Summary

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• Flora is hanging out in her room, thinking about how she's a cynic, when she sees her next-door neighbor, Tootie, vacuuming up her lawn. She looks up and sees—look out—that Tootie's about to run over a squirrel. Too late.
• As Flora goes rushing outside, she thinks of what to do in this situation. She remembers Terrible Things Can Happen to You! suggests CPR so she tries that on the little guy.
• Miraculously, the squirrel survives. Flora decides to call him Ulysses, and thinks he's a superhero; to prove it, the little guy grabs the vacuum cleaner and lifts it over his head.
• Still reeling from the vacuum incident, Flora takes Ulysses back to her place, where her mom freaks out about having a dirty, diseased rodent in her house.
• Tootie wants to see if the squirrel really is a superhero, so she brings the little guy and Flora over to her place, where Flora meets Tootie's great-nephew, William Spiver, who is temporarily blind. Together, they watch as Ulysses types on the computer. So he is a superhero.
• Back at her mom's house, Flora's mom is still freaking out about the squirrel, and makes her dad promise to kill the rodent with a shovel. Flora overhears and keeps alert.
• Flora and her dad go to a diner, where the waitress sees Ulysses and flips out; he jumps in her hair, then flies across the restaurant, before landing on the door. Flora, her dad, and Ulysses all make a b-line for the exit before anyone does anything else.
• At Flora's dad's place, Flora and Dr. Meescham nurse the squirrel back to health and feed him, then they talk about how caring and feeling her dad is, and how much he misses her. This is all news to Flora.
• Out in the hall, Mr. Klaus, a mean cat, attacks Flora's dad, and Ulysses fights him off, prompting Flora's dad to agree that he's a superhero and promise not to kill him.
• They go back to Flora's mom's pad, where they explain everything that's happened to her. Cue the fighting. After a bunch of mean words, Flora's mom agrees to let the squirrel stay, but she seems stressed out about it.
• That night, Ulysses is kidnapped, and Flora suspects her mom, so she asks William and Tootie for help to track them down.
• Eventually they head over to Dr. Meescham's place, where they find Ulysses. Flora was right; her mom did kidnap the squirrel, and says sorry. Perhaps that's because Ulysses fought off Mr. Klaus again, right in front of her.
• Everyone cheers up and reads Ulysses's latest poem.