It was a known fact that with age came a lot of life experiences, and Albert Hopps, who most of the time was called Grandpa Hopps at the farm when he visited, was no exception. If anything, the experiences that he had over the many years he had been alive were much more unique than some other elderly mammals he knew.

The place he was known spinning some wild tales from back in his day was at the Hopps family dinner table. Whenever he came over to visit his grandchildren, whether for the holidays or for somebody's birthday, he always had some sort of interesting story to tell. The young ones always listened attentively when their grandpa told them, and they always looked forward to hearing them whenever the time came about to tell them, as they never knew what story from his time he would tell next.

And the conversation he commenced at the dinner table this time around was one that was a bit unusual. As soon as the prayer had been said by Bonnie, giving thanks to the crops that supplied them with the wonderful food on their table, Albert took a drink and started to tell them about something he remembered.

"You know," the elderly lagomorph said, "automobiles and crop duster propellers aren't a good combination."

Nick, who was beginning to dig into the home-cooked food on his plate, set his fork down and looked at him, unsure as to how that suddenly became the dinner table discussion. "What do you mean by that, sir?" he asked him.

"You don't gotta call me, sir," Albert said to the fox with a smile. "Just call me Albert. I don't mind that at all."

Despite being born in an era that wasn't easy towards foxes, bent on the prejudice that they were to be feared, he had a welcoming heart to mammals of all kinds, regardless of whether they were predator or prey. So when Nick had been at the burrow when he and Judy visited the farm, Albert, the moment he had been introduced to him, treated him with great kindness, the way the rest of the Hopps family did.

"So, Albert," the vulpine said. "What was this again about automobiles and propellers?"

"Oh, dear," Stu, who was sitting in the seat next to him, muttered under his breath, shaking his head.

"What is it, Dad?" Judy asked from the opposite side of the dining room table.

"Your grandfather told this story a hundred times," her father replied.

"I don't think I'ver ever heard it," the doe admitted.

"And I don't think I recall hearing this one either," Bonnie added, looking over at her husband.

"In that case, I will be glad to tell y'all about it," Albert responded. Looking over at Stu, he added, "For the hundred-and-first time." He set the glass he was holding down and cleared his throat. "It happened during one of the worst heat spells the Burrows ever got. I worked at base that housed crop dusters, but where I was heading to everyday was a long drive from where we lived, so my father picked out a nice car for me to make the commute with. It was this nice dark blue color, and it was such a nice one to drive. The word 'was' is the key to the story, though."

"This, I assume, is where the whole propeller thing comes into play?" Nick asked as he listened to the old rabbit's tale.

Albert nodded at the fox's inquiry. "Bingo!" he said, snapping his fingers together. From there, he continued on with the story, trying to remember how everything occurred as best as his memory could. "The boss told me that it was probably wise that I park near the hangar while the others were spraying the fields."

"Then what happened?" Judy asked him after he paused for a moment.

Her grandfather continued, "You see, there was this one pilot that worked there that was pretty cocky. And you remember what I always said about folks with a cocky attitude."

She remembered distinctly what he always used to say about that, as he had always told her to remember that when she went out on her own someday. "That an attitude like that leads to nothing but disaster," she responded.

"Those words are the wisest thing I believe I learned with all the years I've been 'round," Albert said. "And they ring true when it comes to who I'm talkin' about. So anyway, this pilot I knew had his own way of landing the machinery."

"And what was that?" Nick wanted to know.

"He steered the duster with his foot paws," Albert said, shaking his head as he started to chuckle at the memory of it all. "He used to tell me all the time, 'I've landed this thing so many times, I don't even have to look out t' know where I'm going. I can do it from memory, 'cause I got the memory of an elephant.' Well, guess what? That didn't work out for him that day. Heck, it didn't work out to well for me, either. And you know why?"

"Why?" Judy replied.

"Because," the old lagomorph said, "as I was walking back over to where I needed to go, I hear somethin' that didn't sound quite right. The pilot that was landin' the biplane with his feet ended up steering straight into where I had the car parked."

"Oh my gosh," Nick said upon hearing this part of the story.

"Except when I saw what was happening, I was saying worse words than that," Albert said. "But that wasn't even where it all ended. The complicated part was trying to explain that the back of the car looked the way it did because it ended up getting hit by an airplane."