The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash is a 1980 picture book written by Trinka Hakes Noble and illustrated by Steven Kellogg. The book has enjoyed great popularity since its original writing, starting a series about the misadventures of Jimmy's boa and even receiving a feature episode on Reading Rainbow.
Meggie returns from a class trip to the farm. Thanks to her classmate Jimmy bringing along his pet boa constrictor, the meant-to-be-normal field trip spiraled into a whirlwind of chaos.
This book includes examples of the following tropes:
- Back to Front: The story opens with Meggie telling her mother about a class trip to the farm, and how things didn't get interesting until the cow started crying... because the farmer knocked a hay bale onto it... because he was distracted by the sight of his pigs climbing onto the school bus to eat the kids' lunches... and so on.
- Bowel-Breaking Bricks: A hen, terrified by Jimmy's boa, lays an egg in midair.
- Disaster Dominoes: Jimmy took his boa constrictor along during a class trip to the farm and the snake ate the farmer's wife's washing, then crawled into the hen-house, which frightened the hens, which caused one to lay an egg, which broke on a student's head and lead to an all-out egg fight amongst the students, which then resulted in them using up all the eggs and running to use the pigs' corn instead, which then caused the pigs to raid the bus to eat the kids' lunches, which distracted the farmer who crashed his tractor into a hay bale and pushed it on top of a cow, which quite understandably burst into tears. Amusingly enough, the story is told Back to Front.
- Driver Faces Passenger: The farmer crashes his tractor into a hay bale, knocking it onto a cow, because he was driving with his head turned as he yelled at his pigs to get off the school bus.
- Extreme Omnivore: Jimmy's pet boa eats some of the laundry (as the title says).
- Food Fight: A non-cafeteria example. One of the chickens lays an egg out of fear of the boa, and it drops on a girl's head. Her classmate Tommy laughs. The girl throws an egg at him, only for it to hit another classmate when he ducks. Soon the entire class is throwing eggs. When they run out of that, they throw corn instead.
- Housepet Pig: Jimmy's boa is left behind at the farm, but Jimmy isn't that upset because one of the pigs decided to come home with him.
- Noodle Incident: When Meggie explains that the boa ultimately caused everything, her mother essentially says "Oh, No... Not Again!", implying Jimmy's boa has caused unmentioned additional chaos before.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Averted. While Jimmy's boa scares the farmer's wife and the chickens, it doesn't mean to cause any harm and is fairly non-aggressive. The Stinger even shows that the farmer's wife took a liking to it, keeping it inside with them in the winter and knitting it a long sweater.
