Read Online Raising Rufus by David Fulk - Free Book Online Page A

Ultraburger from Royal Castle. He figured if Rufus was going to be chowing down on hamburger, well, then he would too.
    He brought his reptilian friend up from his downstairs lair and lifted him onto the workbench. Even though he was only three days old, he already seemed heavier to Martin, and maybe an inch or two longer. “Don’t eat it all at once,” he said as he tore the plastic off the package of beef. “We have to make it last.” As Martin expected he would, Rufus went right after the meat like a hungry puppy.
    Digging into his own cold burger, Martin opened the dinosaur book and got down to business.
    But it didn’t take long for him to start thinking this whole project might not have been such a hot idea. The book had pictures and descriptions of all kinds of dinosaurs, but none of them looked at all like Rufus.
HADROSAURUS. Approximately nine feet in height, this dinosaur stood upright on its hind legs and had short forelimbs. Its most distinctive feature was its broad snout, shaped like a duck’s bill…
    Short forelimbs, okay. But there was no danger of anyone mistaking Rufus for a duck.
CAMPTOSAURUS. Camptosaurus had a thick body, and the juveniles often walked on two legs. With its sharp, toothless beak, it most likely fed on leaves, small branches, and tall grasses.
    A beak? Leaves and grasses? Nope…nothing like
this
thing. Martin thought about it as he absently watched Rufus polish off the last of the raw hamburger.
    Every time there was something in a picture or a caption that seemed like a match, there was something else that canceled it out. After twenty minutes of flipping through the book, Martin was starting to lose enthusiasm. “This is stupid,” he grumbled. “Dinosaurs are
gone.
You’re just a freaky lizard.” He lifted the remaining half of his Ultraburger up to his mouth—and was startled when Rufus suddenly leaped up and chomped down on it, barely missing Martin’s pinky.
    “Hey!” he exclaimed as he watched Rufus twitch and tug, trying to tear off a piece of beef while hanging in midair by the grip of his tiny teeth. “That’s mine!”
    A corner of the bun gave way and Rufus dropped onto the tabletop with nothing to show for his sudden attack. But now he was all worked up, and he thrashed and squealed so annoyingly that Martin’s resistance quickly wore down.
    “Okay, okay! One piece.”
    He broke off a chunk of the burger meat and held it out toward Rufus, who snapped it away and dug right in.
    “There’s no
pigosaurus
in here. But I’m thinking that’s you.”
    Martin let out a long breath and rubbed his eyes. Maybe later his dad would let him use his computer, and he could do a more thorough search.
    Eyes glazing over, he idly leafed through the book again, stopping when he came to a page he vaguely remembered from his birthday two years earlier.
    TYRANNOSAURUS REX.
    He looked again at Rufus, who was tripping all over his own feet as he wrestled with his piece of the burger. Martin couldn’t help but snicker.
    “Right.”
    He held the book out next to Rufus, comparing him to the artist’s drawing. Not much to go by, but might as well read on.
TYRANNOSAURUS REX. T. rex was one of the most fearsome carnivores that ever lived. It was characterized by powerful hind legs with three forward toes and one back; tiny forelimbs with two toes…
    He took a look at Rufus’s shriveled forelimbs, which he hadn’t really paid that much attention to before: two toes.
and long, sharp teeth. Though it was probably a scavenger of dead animals, it was most likely a powerful hunter as well, with a voracious appetite for meat.
    As he watched Rufus tear away at the beef, Martin got an odd feeling. He held the book up next to Rufus again, and suddenly felt a strong tingling in the deepest caverns of his stomach.
    “Noooo,” he muttered, barely above a whisper. “It’s crazy. It’s ridiculous. No way!”
    But his mind wouldn’t let go of an alarming thought that just kept getting