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The main characters in this story are animals. Carl Sandburg introduces these characters in a comical manner:
For chairman they picked an old flongboo who was an umpire and used to umpire many mix-ups. Among the flongboos he was called "the umpire of umpires," "the king of umpires," "the prince of umpires," "the peer of umpires."
Sandburg said he "attempts to catch fantasy, accents, pulses, eye flashes, inconceivably rabid and perfect gestures, sudden pantomimic movements, drawls and drolleries, gazings and musings” to make the descriptions interesting to readers both young and old, which is evident in these lines:
It was easy for the fat stub hogs with their fat stub tails. But it was not so easy for the blue fox who uses his tail to help him when he runs, when he eats, when he walks or talks, when he makes pictures or writes letters in the snow or when he puts a snack of bacon meat with stripes of fat and lean to hide till he wants it under a big rock by a river.
Sandburg also uses literary devices including onomatopoeia, alliteration, and repetition to describe the animals’ movements and personalities:
As they pattered pitty-pat, pitty-pat, each with feet and toenails, ears and hair, everything but tails, into the Philadelphia union depot, they had nothing to say.
