The Animal Store

If I had a hundred dollars to spend,

Or maybe a little more,

I’d hurry as fast as my legs would go

Straight to the animal store.

I wouldn’t say, “How much for this or that?”

“What kind of a dog is he?”

I’d buy as many as rolled an eye,

Or wagged a tail at me!

I’d take the hound with the drooping ears

That sits by himself alone;

Cockers and Cairns and wobbly pups

For to be my very own.

I might buy a parrot all red and green,

And the monkey I saw before,

If I had a hundred dollars to spend,

Or maybe a little more.

Copyright Credit: Rachel Field, "The Animal Store" from Taxis and Toadstools. Copyright © 1926 by Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright renewed 1953 by Arthur S. Pederson. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Golden Book of Poetry (Doubleday, 1947)