When Rikki's ear itched, he would use his hind leg to scratch his ear. The noise his ear made
when he scratched sounded like "tikki", so his mother gave him his middle name, Tikki.
One day, Rikki went exploring, and his journeying led him to the carnival. There were many
things to eat at the carnival; cotton candy, popcorn, and a special candy called taffy. Rikki tried
some cotton candy, but it was too sweet. He tried some popcorn, but it was too salty. But then
he tried taffy, and he loved it!
He went to the taffy stand, where a man was making taffy with a taffy making machine. Rikki
stood behind the machine, and as taffy came out of the machine he ate it up. He ate, and he ate,
and he ate.
Pretty soon, the man began to wonder why his taffy machine was not making taffy. He turned
off the machine and looked at it. The man took the cover off the machine to look at it. Rikki got
scared when the man came near, and he didn't know what to do. He couldn't run away because
surely the man would see him. Rikki cringed as he saw the man's hands take off the cover of
the machine. But the man did not discover Rikki. Rikki finally jumped into the taffy machine
to hide.
The man finally decided to try the machine again, so he closed the cover, with Rikki inside it.
Rikki was trapped! The man turned on the machine, and was delighted to discover that it was
making taffy once again. But his delight turned to disappointment as a big bubble of
taffy came out of the machine. He did not know that Rikki was trapped inside the bubble of
taffy. The man took the bubble of taffy and threw it in the garbage can, and then went to buy
a new taffy machine.
Meanwhile, along came Marshall, a young boy who loved taffy even more than Rikki did.
Marshall didn't have any money to buy taffy. So he was delighted when he found a large
bubble of taffy in the garbage can. When Marshall lifted the taffy out, the bubble started to
shake and shimmy. Marshall was puzzled, but he decided to eat the taffy anyway. As soon as he
bit down on the taffy, he bit the end of Rikki's tail. Out popped Rikki's head out of the other
end of the bubble with a yelp! Rikki bit Marshall on the hand. Now it was Marshall's turn to
yelp, and he threw the taffy into the forest.
Rikki popped one leg out of the bubble, then another, then the others. Rikki walked home. His mother was at home giving the twins a bath, when in walked a bubble of taffy. Rikki's mother knew at once what had happened. The only way she could get the taffy off was to lick it off. Rikki helped. Thereafter, his mother called him Rikki Tikki Taffy, only the Indian word for taffy is tavi, which is how he got his name.