Your Mother Was a Neanderthal by Jon Scieszka

Author:Jon Scieszka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

SEVEN

Fred dove back inside like a bullet. A split second later something large, furry, and mad crashed into the logs behind him. Dirt and dead leaves showered down on us. A huge paw with wicked long claws shot between the logs. and swiped the air. Everyone dove for the ground. Through the cracks and holes between the logs I could see fangs, claws, and a cat as big as a small bus.

The gigantic cat swatted at the roof logs and roared its disappointment at missing a meal. More dirt and dead leaves rained down on us. And then, with one log-creaking bounce, the cat jumped and was gone.

Duh uncovered his head. “Caa.”

“Cat?” said Fred. “That was no cat. Why didn’t you tell me there was a monster with fangs out there?”

“Most likely a saber-toothed cave cat,” said Sam.

“Thank you once again, Mr. Superior Brainpower. I feel so much better now that I know the name of the thing that almost ate me for breakfast. Now do you have any bright ideas on how to get us out of this jam?”

Sam looked at the raggedy bunch of cavemen crouched in the dirt around us. “Okay, let’s look at this logically.” He picked up a stick and drew a dot and a letter in the dirt. “We are at point A, a hole in the ground with a bunch of guys with no weapons, no tools, and quite possibly no brains.”

The cavemen looked at Sam’s drawing and hooted.

“We would like to get to point B.” He drew another dot and labeled it B. “Joe’s room in New York.”

Duh and the rest of the cavemen looked closely at the marks in the dirt.

“But the only way to get to B is go past C, a rather large killer cat, into D, the cave, to find E, the cave painting.” Sam ended with a wild flourish of dots, lines, a triangle-headed cat, an arc for the cave, and three stick figures for the painting.

“Do you follow?”

The caveguys studied Sam’s drawings and nodded and grunted to themselves.

“But how do we do that?” asked Fred.

“How do we do that?” said Sam, tapping his head with his stick. “How? Hmmmm. Now that’s a whole different question. Magic, I guess.”

Sam and Fred turned to me.

“I’ve still got my straw,” I said, hopefully.

“Would you forget that stupid straw trick. We need some big magic,” said Fred. “Why didn’t you learn spells to make us invisible, or gigantic, or able to blast fire out of our eyes, or something useful like that?”

“I didn’t think we’d need any magic if we kept The Book with us.”

We all stared at Sam’s drawing again, looking from A to B, worrying about C and D, wondering how we would ever find E.

“Now I really wish we had some weapons,” said Fred. “One blast of an Uzi would turn that monster into a scaredy-cat.”

Sam looked up. “As Archimedes once said—Eureka.”

“We’re going to make machine guns?” I said.

“No. We’re going to scare the cat,” said Sam.

“With what? Your good looks?” said Fred.

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