Calvin Coconut: The Zippy Fix
1 - Rodents of Hawaii
Manly Stanley the centipede, our class pet, looked out at us from inside a jar on our teacher Mr. Purdy's desk. He was frowning and pounding fifty of his one hundred legs on the glass. I knew what he was thinking: why were we _drawing pictures of things that would love to eat him?
Hey! he seemed to shout. What's going on out there? Let me see!
Julio, Rubin, Willy, and I were crowded around my desk working on a science poster. Our project was called Rodents of Hawaii.
We'd drawn pictures of a mouse, a rat, a guinea pig, and a gerbil. We wanted to put a hamster and a mongoose in there, too, but Mr. Purdy said hamsters were illegal in the islands. They could bring in diseases. And a mongoose is a carnivore, not a rodent.
We were stumped.
Manly Stanley raced up onto his rock and stretched his neck for a better look. "Hey, Manly," I said. "
You know of any more rodents we can draw?"
Julio snorted. "He should. Rodents love centipedes."
Manly Stanley cringed and scurried down into the shadows.
"Look, Julio. You scared him."
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