The New Noah Read Online Free PDF Page B

herself, her nose buried in the soft fruit, while behind her Puff would be solemnly sucking her tail. She did not mind this as long as he only sucked;
occasionally, however, he would become annoyed and impatient because no milk appeared, and would start to tug and bite with his sharp, little tusks. Then Blow would whisk round and chase him into
the corner, pushing him hard in the ribs, and return muttering angrily to her delicious plate of food.
    In the end, however, I was forced to separate them, only putting them together again for a game once a day, for Puff had sucked at Blow’s tail so enthusiastically that he had removed all
the hair and it had become quite bald. So for some time they lived next door to one another while Blow’s tail grew new fur, and while Puff learnt to eat solid food.
    Blow, for some unknown reason, was much more nervous than Puff, and as soon as he discovered this he used to go out of his way to frighten her. He would hide behind the fence and jump out on her
when she passed, or else he would lie there pretending to be asleep, and as soon as Blow came near him would leap to his feet and charge her with loud grunts. One day he frightened her so much that
she fell into the food and came out with bits of banana and mango stuck all over her.
    Puff invented one special trick which he took great delight in playing on her every morning after their cage had been cleaned out. I would leave a pile of crisp, dry banana leaves in one corner
for their bed; no sooner had I put it in, than Puff would race over, burrow down under the leaves until he was completely hidden, and wait there patiently, sometimes for as long as half an hour,
until Blow came to see where he had gone. Then, with a loud squeal, he would leap out of the leaves and chase her across the pen. Sometimes, he would play this trick three times in a morning, but
poor Blow would never learn from experience. As soon as he shot out of the leaves like a striped rocket, she would turn tail and run as fast as her fat legs would carry her, obviously thinking that
it was a leopard or something of a similar nature that was attacking her.
    Since they spent most of their day chasing each other about or playing tricks on one another, the baby pigs naturally became very tired, and towards evening they would only just have enough
energy left to eat their supper.
    Sometimes, in fact, they would go to sleep while still sucking at the bottle and I would have to wake them up so that they could finish their meal. Then, grunting sleepily, they would burrow
deep down into their bed of banana leaves and lie there side by side, snoring in chorus all through the night.
    Just about the time that the baby pigs were going sleepily to bed, the animals in the cage next door were starting to wake up and take an interest in life. They were the galagos, or bush babies,
tiny animals, the size of a newly-born kitten, which look rather like a cross between an owl and a squirrel with a bit of monkey thrown in. They had thick, soft, grey fur and long bushy tails.
Their hands and feet were like a monkey’s and they had enormous great golden eyes similar to an owl’s.
    All day the galagos would sleep curled up together in their bedroom, but towards evening, just as the sun was getting low, they would wake up and peer out of their bedroom door, yawning sleepily
and blinking at you with their great astonished-looking eyes. Very slowly, they would come out into the cage, still yawning and stretching, and then the three of them would sit in a circle and have
a wash and brush up.
    This was a very lengthy and complicated performance. They would start with the very tips of their tails and slowly work upwards until every scrap of their furs had been combed and smoothed by
their long, bony fingers; then, blinking their golden eyes at each other in self-satisfaction, they would begin the next job of the evening. This was doing their exercises. Sitting on their hind
legs, they