"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 1 - little Fuzzy1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

room and yeeked to be let out. Going about twenty feet from the
house, he used the chisel to dig a small hole, and after it had
served its purpose he filled it in carefully and came running back.

Well, maybe Fuzzies were naturally gregarious, and were home-
makers-den-holes, or nests, or something like that. Nobody wants
messes made in the house, and when the young ones did it, their
parents would bang them around to teach them better manners.
This was Little Fuzzy's home now; he knew how he ought to
behave in it.

The next morning at daylight, he was up on the bed, trying to dig
Pappy Jack out from under the blankets. Besides being a most
efficient land-prawn eradicator, he made a first rate alarm clock.
But best of all, he was Pappy Jack's Little Fuzzy. He wanted out;
this time Jack took his movie camera and got the whole operation
on film. One thing, there'd have to be a little door, with a spring to
hold it shut, that Little Fuzzy could operate himself. That was
designed during breakfast. It only took a couple of hours to make
and install it; Little Fuzzy got the idea as soon as he saw it, and
figured out how to work it for himself.

Jack went back to the workshop, built a fire on the hand forge and
forged a pointed and rather broad blade, four inches long, on the
end of a foot of quarter-inch round tool-steel. It was too point-
heavy when finished, so he welded a knob on the other end to
balance it.

Little Fuzzy knew what that was for right away; running outside, he
dug a couple of practice holes with it, and then began casting
about in the grass for land-prawns.

Jack followed him with the camera and got movies of a couple of
prawn killings, accomplished with smooth, by-the-numbers
precision. Little Fuzzy hadn't learned that chop-slap-slap routine in
the week since he had found the wood chisel.

Going into the shed, he hunted for something without more than a
general idea of what it would look like, and found it where Little
Fuzzy had discarded it when he found the chisel. It was a stock of
hardwood a foot long, rubbed down and polished smooth,
apparently with sandstone. There was a paddle at one end, with
enough of an edge to behead a prawn, and the other end had been
worked to a point. He took it into the living hut and sat down at the
desk to ex amine it with a magnifying glass. Bits of soil embedded
in the sharp end-that had been used as a pick. The paddle end had
been used as a shovel, beheader and shell-cracker. Little Fuzzy
had known exactly what he wanted when he'd started making that
thing, he'd kept on until it was as perfect as possible, and had
stopped short of spoiling it by overrefinement.