It was a good dump, Rory the kangaroo rat decided, altho he had no intention of staying long. Just a few days rest, and then he'd be off. But that was before he found the model airplane with its motor still pretty much intact. Ever since he'd spent a winter at an airfield and listened to the pilots and mechanics talk, he'd longed to fly.

But before he could hide the plane and then begin to work on it, Charlie Gribble came along--a boy as interested in the plane as Rory. Charlie was in the dump looking for a safe place for his pet lemming, Crispin, which the housekeeper had just thrown out of the house.

Together, the three of them made a good team. What one couldn't do, the other could. And the plane soon became a real plane--one that could fly on its own, with controls inside it. The only problem was a huge flock of starlings that had recently descended on the garbage part of the dump. They were a nuisance for the whole town, but they were a real menace to Rory, Charlie and Crispin every step of the way.

How the Fox was rebuilt, how the three unlikely collaborators did their work, the attempts of the town to drive aaway the starlings and the final victory of the Fox and its crew add up to a book that blends technology, fantasy and real problems in new and interesting ways.