When my brother Jordan brought home a baby raccoon he found in the woods, we thought at first it would be a perfect family pet. We named him Tubby because he was so round and plump. Dad helped us build a box for him to sleep in. Mom found some soft, clean rags for his bed. We laughed and laughed as we watched Tubby eat and play. As Tubby grew bigger and stronger, our laughter stopped. Tubby scattered Dad's neckties all over the house. He broke Mom's favorite vase. He knocked over Jordan's bike. He treed our cat. He even chewed up all the rolled newspapers I had ready for my paper route. Finally, Dad had to call the game warden to come get Tubby and to return him to the woods where he belonged. We were sad to see him go, but we had learned a valuable lesson. Wild animals do not always make good pets. Does the topic sentence provide a summary of the paragraph's contents?

How many sentences does the paragraph contain?

This paragraph is one of the longest ones we have studied in this section. Could this paragraph be expanded to an essay of several paragraphs in length?