Alex Peppervine
Alex Peppervine is a rabbit in fifth grade who spends a day riding along with Judy and Nick for a school project. He makes his first appearance in We Can Fix Pawbert in the W-Series.
Background
Alex's class watched Judy and Nick on the news at school, and when the ridealong came up he asked for the two of them by name, although his father warned they might be too busy. His father, a rabbit in a gray windbreaker, drops him off at Precinct 1 and says he has been looking forward to it all week. Alex brings a spiral notebook and the school's digital camera, labeled with its name.
Personality
He is punctual and careful. He arrives exactly on time, buckles his seat belt before anyone asks, and straightens his own collar before his father can. He writes down everything he is told, underlines the rules, and asks which ones are official. He takes instructions literally, and sometimes to the letter rather than the spirit: told to wait outside a bakery, he holds the door open with his feet still on the sidewalk. He asks plain questions that land hard, such as whether driving to a call is an action and whether two detectives' bosses get a copy of the report. He is pleased by small things, a date stamp, a juice box, a boxed cinnamon roll, and he points his camera at things the adults around him do not think to photograph.
Series History
W-Series
In "Ridealong" His father signs him in at the Precinct 1 front desk, Judy gives him a laminated lanyard reading OFFICIAL RIDEALONG OBSERVER, and Clawhauser declares that the kit now outranks him, though not by enough to claim his donut. He rides in the back of the cruiser through a laundromat fight that has already ended, a parking dispute that dissolves, and a beaver who broke into his own hardware store. He enters Nick's rules in his notebook with WILDE in brackets, and photographs the document box rather than the car. Over a juice box Judy cleared with his school, he asks Nick his favorite part of the job and hears that it is Judy. He spends the afternoon at her desk with the date stamp and asks to finish stamping before her tour of the evidence intake window. At a bakery where Hitchcock and Scully have eaten the recovered cinnamon rolls, he keeps to the sidewalk while looking in through the door, takes notes in front of Jake, and asks whether the detectives' bosses get a copy of the report. The baker gives him a cinnamon roll for the observer. At after-care he hands the lanyard back. A week later his tri-fold posterboard reaches Precinct 1, titled WHAT POLICE OFFICERS ACTUALLY DO, with photographs and pencil captions and a conclusion that the two detectives solved problems all day. Judy pins it to the bulletin board and mails him the lanyard to keep.
Key Relationships
Judy Hopps
The detective he asked for. She spends the day afraid that patrol calls and paperwork have disappointed him, while he is happy at her desk with the stamp. His poster shows her the day as he saw it, and she sends his lanyard back to him with a thank-you note.
Nick Wilde
Nick introduces himself as the partner and supplies the rules Alex writes down. Alex asks him what it is like being a fox officer and what his favorite part of the job is, and Nick answers both straight.