BREWSTER

PETER CHAIKO was adopted as a 9-year-old from an orphanage in Siberia, and when he arrived in Hastings-on-Hudson he was a terror, scratching his teachers and kicking the principal in the leg. His father, Theodore Chaiko, uses the term “oppositional” to describe Peter’s behavior, but from several vivid accounts, that appears to be a euphemism.

The Hastings schools had the good sense to pair Peter with an upbeat Russian immigrant and tutor, Alexander Davis, who had the good sense to ply him with Russian songs and fairy tales and to notice on nature walks that there were creatures Peter could relate to  animals.

Mr. Davis arranged to have Peter placed in the Green Chimneys School here, a cross between a school, a farm and a zoo. Besides an Old McDonald menagerie, it has an emu named Nova, two bald eagles, miniature horses, vultures and an Andean condor. Like Dottie, a rotund Yorkshire pig that had been kept in a Bronx apartment, many animals were rescued from deplorable circumstances or because they had been hurt.

In other words, they have a lot in common with Peter, who wound up in an orphanage because of birth parents who, according to what Peter has confided to his family and school officials, combated the drabness of their lives with vodka and abandoned him to the streets.