n Rainsford's lap, jumped suddenly to the
ground, grabbed the chopper-digger he had left beside the chair and
started across the grass. Everybody got to their feet, the visitors
getting cameras out. The Fuzzies seemed perplexed by all the excitement.
It was only another land-prawn, wasn't it?

Ko-Ko got in front of it, poked it on the nose to stop it and then struck
a dramatic pose, flourishing his weapon and bringing it down on the
prawn's neck. Then, after flopping it over, he looked at it almost in
sorrow and hit it a couple of whacks with the flat. He began pulling it
apart and eating it.

"I see why you call him Ko-Ko," Ruth said, aiming her camera, "Don't the
others do it that way?"

"Well, Little Fuzzy runs along beside them and pivots and gives them a
quick chop. Mike and Mitzi flop theirs over first and behead them on their
backs. And Mamma takes a swipe at their legs first. But beheading and
breaking the undershell, they all do that."

"Uh-huh; that's basic," she said. "Instinctive. The technique is either
self-learned or copied. When Baby begins killing his own prawns, see if he
doesn't do it the way Mamma does!"

"Hey, look!" Jimenez cried. "He's making a lobster pick for himself!"

Through lunch, they talked exclusively about Fuzzies. The subjects of the
discussion nibbled things that were given to them, and yeeked among
themselves. Gerd van Riebeek suggested that they were discussing the odd
habits of human-type people. Juan Jimenez looked at him, slightly
disturbed, as though wondering just how seriously he meant it.

"You know, what impressed me most in the taped account was the incident of
the damnthing," said Ruth Ortheris. "Any animal associating with man will
try to attract attention if something's wrong, but I never heard of one,
not even a Freyan kholph or a Terran chimpanzee, that would use
descriptive pantomime. Little Fuzzy was actually making a symbolic
representation, by abstracting the distinguishing characteristic of the
damnthing."

"Think that stiff-arm gesture and bark might have been intended to
represent a rifle?" Gerd van Riebeek asked. "He'd seen you shooting
before, hadn't he?"

"I don't think it was anything else. He was telling me, 'Big nasty
damnthing outside; shoot it like you did the harpy.' And if he hadn't run
past me and pointed back, that damnthing would have killed me."

Jimenez, hesitantly, said, "I know I'm speaking from ignorance. You're the
Fuzzy expert. But