Dinosaur Hunter

by Steve White

  The woods continued to thin but it was not an environmental shift; many of the trees and shrubs had been overturned, the trunks of the smallest sheared apart, their branches and twigs stripped. The fern meadows had been flattened into a thick duff of dung and fronds that no doubt added to the ageless mulch that carpeted the floor. There was dung everywhere, piles of it. It attracted birds and we saw our first dinosaur of the day, a moment I felt we should always mark.

  It was a Saurornitholestes. The little bird lizard was a male, bedecked in iridescent plumage, his flightless wing-arms tucked tight against his lithe frame, its tail weighted down into a gentle arc by vanes arranged in such a way that the tail itself looked like one large feather. Rictal bristles fluttered on his eyelids and flowered around his snout.

  To the untrained eye, he’d have looked like just another beautiful bird, but to me he was a natural wonder. The shame of it was that he was not doing something sublime like sunning himself or displaying for a mate, but rather he was rooting through shit. Still, he got what he came for. A quick scrabble in the dung and there came a sudden squeal, cut short, and then the little raptor was trotting off with a furry body with a long tail suspended in his jaws.

  The damage to the forests worsened. It looked like the passing of a tornado or a hurricane. Were it not for the lack of ash, I’d have believed a pyroclastic cloud had blasted through this vicinity.

  However, the cause of all this destruction was the foraging of Einiosaurus. A huge herd of them was nesting nearby and it was there our hide was hidden, overlooking the colony amongst the rough and rumble of shattered trees. But time was against the herd now; they needed tons of forage daily to support the young whose growth they needed desperately to fuel. The local woodlands were stripped clean, ruined but for the new growth already yielding green shoots to the sky. Every day, one parent or the other ran the gauntlet of predators ringing the colony in teeth and claws; every day they travelled further and further afield to bring back crops of pulp for the young and every day while the young grew fatter, the adults grew leaner and weaker. Every day, some would fall to the predators, some to exhaustion or injury, and every day a nest of hatchlings growing to calves would find them alone. Abandoned, they became prey for those predators bold enough to risk trampling or impalement by the increasingly cantankerous adult Einosaurs who stayed to protect the babies.

  But the dead piled up. Illness took as many as predators, who often conducted mercy killings on the sickly adults while few of the young lived to suffer at the hands of starvation. Some adult Einosaurs came back sporting horrific injuries, slashing wounds on their thighs and flanks, semi-circular bites out of their tails. Stalwart and with a reptilian resignation they struggled on; some healed, the maggots cleaning out their wounds; some didn’t, turned to living skeletons by bacteria or fungus.

  The colony now looked like the remains of a Napoleonic battlefield, covered in adult bodies that looked like blasted fortifications, skeletons like wheel spokes, and bodies everywhere, while overhead, scavenging birds circled remorselessly. Our first day at the hide, we’d worn the rebreathers. It helped with the smell. It was the stench not just of rotten flesh but of rotten vegetation and rotten eggs. We had sat thunderstruck while trying not to puke when the wind shifted and blew the fug into the hide. Through binoculars we watched raptors, so beautiful as they went about their ugly business, wrestling baby Ceratopsians almost as large as they were out of their nests. The cries of the baby would sometimes bring an adult charging in but as it was invariably not their own nest, once the raptors had scattered it would leave and the hunters would return and continue on. These calves died slowly, the raptors lacking the killing power to put an end to the suffering with any speed. And usually one became two became three became more. These were not packs but mobs.

  In the morning, at dusk and probably at night, racoon-sized mammals would dart out from amongst the treeline, such as it was, to grab any baby they could carry. They were already fat on egg yolk and embryo and all that protein had made them tough enough to take hatchlings. It was still a risk, mind, as Troodonts and raptors who came for Einosaur young would still instinctively chase down a mammal laden with a struggling baby. Sometimes they’d abandon the baby and make a run for it. Sometimes they’d even make it back to cover. Sometimes they didn’t. I’ve never liked rats and watching one of the Troodonts, so elegant and nimble, and somehow looking scarily intelligent, pin one of the mammals and cut short its squealing always made me feel better inside.

  But to me, perhaps the most terrifying of the predators attending the colony were the varanids, the monitor lizards, some as big, if not bigger than many of the dinosaurs, implacable, seemingly invulnerable, with that shark-like rapacious patience. Their jaws hung with drool and wearing festering veils of flies, they would saunter in and take what they liked.

  Of course, we also surmised the site would bring what we were there for: Tyrannosaurs, Albertosaurus and Daspletosaurus. We knew that adults of the latter, being habitual Ceratopsian killers, were present; sub-adults from both types were also there, drawn to the rich scents and apparently easy pickings of the colony. Similarly, it was very possible that adult Albertosaurs might also be lured at the prospect of tons of weakened Einosaur flesh, maybe hoping that chance would bring down an exhausted adult or risking a dash into the colony to snatch up some hapless babies.

  So, this seemed like the perfect place to set up our hide. I could sit and sketch while Cassie would sit draped across her beloved Ruger and stare out at the nests, ranging her sights into the no-man’s land around the colony and willing a magnificent Tyrannosaur to come striding from the shattered woods around us.

  The stream wound on. Felled trees sometimes straddled it and we had to pick our way around them with extreme caution. We didn’t want to trip or stumble any more than we wanted to walk into a juvenile Albertosaur.

  The biggest pines and willows had been skinned of their bark. The Einosaurs had used their beaks to delicately shear it away. From the height of the damage some had even chanced walking up the trunk on their hands until they were standing upright as bears. From there, they had pruned away the higher branches and stripped off the bark. The air smelt of resin and compost.

  Mist swarmed across the water. Rain made the stream’s surface shimmer with ripples. Looking at the surrounding carnage it was hard to imagine how the flora would bounce back. But then you saw the dung and realized that the circle of life was death and defecation offered as fertilizer for the new saplings and sprouts fingering their way up through the battlefield detritus. Ferns and flowers would soon bedeck the woods once more.

  In the meantime, there was still food enough if you knew where to look. Carrie raised a fist and I dropped to one knee, water gurgling around me.

  She pointed. Up ahead was a Struthiomimid. It was a male, nervous, fidgeting and fussing in the stream’s centre. He looked about constantly while his down rustled like a sack of shredded paper.

  The reason for his concerns became clear when a female stepped out of the woods and strode anxiously out to join him. A second followed, at the head of a crèche of babies who bumbled along behind, little dust bunnies of fluffy down wetted into clusters of spikes so that they looked like sea urchins as much as baby dinosaurs. The females outstretched their wings and the chicks skittered into the shade they cast (which, under the miserable grey of the morning, wasn’t much), hiding from the rain perhaps or feeling safer in the psychological protection they cast. The male led the flock across the stream until there were four females and innumerable chicks gathered around a fallen plane tree still rich enough with fruit. There were grape vines as well, and the adults picked off the fruits and fed them to the young.

  Awww, I thought as I watched. So sweet. Then Cassie waved us on and we moved slowly. Adult ostrich dinosaurs could kick and their long-fingered hands could claw or grip you tightly when their taloned toes disembowelled you. And these ones had young so it was imperative that we move cautiously, o
ur ghillie suits swallowed up in the forest and the fog.

  We hadn’t gone very far when Cassie turned back to me, but kept looking down the stream, into the haze. She once more waved me down onto a knee. I felt suddenly vulnerable and looked about. The trees, wounded, their crowns pruned, their trunks traumatized, crowded about me, all full of shadows, while the rain bore down and the fog swirled, and everything was out of focus.

  Cassie started to back up, bent double, shotgun in her hand. She knelt and opened the breech to check what round she was loaded with. Then, she switched it out for another.

  I frowned and my chest tightened.

  ‘What is it?’ I hissed, but she waved me off and just pointed ahead with the blade of her hand.

  Up ahead, wood cracked and leaves rustled; then came a deep burbling – a big animal call. Out of the fog sloshed an Einosaur. Their eyesight wasn’t great and if we kept still, chances were he wouldn’t see us, although my real concern was that he’d take our ghillie suits for a tasty snack. We did our best to sink into the woods, getting lost amongst the boxwood and coral ferns.

  The big Ceratopsian trudged up the stream towards us but paused to take a drink. He cupped water into the claw-shaped hollow at the pointed tip of his lower jaw and tilted back his massive head to let it trickle into his throat. He repeated this several times.

  This was a big male, 15ft if he was an inch and a solid, truculent ton and a half. The huge forward-inclined horn bent far enough to touch the tip of his beak and was as battered and cracked as rough hewn wood; it looked more like it had been carved than grown. The warpaint of his frill was dull but still striking despite the gloom of the woods and he had scars on his flanks, one a long, deep grove of rugose tissue, perhaps from a rival’s horn, or more likely from the slashing attack of a Tyrannosaur. I felt the compulsion to pull my pad but perhaps Cassie was psychic because she turned back and gave me a look that I felt even though her face was hidden by the ghillie suit.

  Thirst slackened, he gave a sharp cough and came about like a battle cruiser and pushed into the woods. Maybe the call had been a summons because more Einosaurs appeared. Some drank but others set about the few trees still standing at the water’s edge. They tore up a maple and splintered its trunk into kindling. White-coloured waterbirds sat on their backs or stalked about their feet, occasionally startled into the air by the raptors that were also part of the Einosaurs’ entourage. The raptors seemed of little concern to the Parkosaurs who were there to scrabble for tubers and roots, and any fallen fruits or nuts that the Ceratopsians left in their wake. When a Bambiraptor did get too close, a male Parkosaur flushed his mane of quills, rattling them while he hissed at the raptor, who decided to seek breakfast elsewhere.

  Finally, Cassie backed up to me, eyes always forward, until I stopped her with a hand in the small of her back. She leant across to me.

  ‘Get a drone to see how busy the stream is,’ she whispered into the comms.

  ‘Magmatic, Magmatic, this is Raptor Red.’ Saying it out loud made me realize what a stupid call sign that was. I called again and the comms clicked.

  ‘Raptor Red, this is Magmatic.’

  ‘Magmatic, you may have seen the Einosaurs we’ve got ahead of us. Can you vector a drone to check the stream as far as the hide and see what the traffic is like.’

  Magmatic acknowledged and went off to check.

  I leaned forward so my head was close to Cassie’s. Over the plastic drumming of rain on the suit, I asked Cassie,

  ‘What do we do if the way to the hide is blocked?’

  Even I thought she was being a bit laissez faire when she shrugged and said, ‘We go around them.’

  Going around meant going into the woods and the closer to the colony we got meant the greater the risk of blundering into trouble.

  ‘Really?’ I said, too loud.

  ‘Well I’m not going back to camp, not having come this far.’

  On the sound files, you hear me exhale.

  ‘OK.’ Again with the politics of denial. Having my own concerns overturned by one so much more relaxed and confident.

  The comms clicked.

  ‘Raptor Red, this is Skyray.’ The drone operator. ‘We have the drone overhead of your position but the vis is only about 50 percent. We have been checking the IR cameras and there are a number of Einosaurs ahead of you, moving mainly north-west, across your axis of march.’

  Axis of march? I thought this was a pleasant morning stroll.

  ‘And, weather check, we reckon the rain won’t let up today. Aerostat is showing a tropical storm front coming in off the KIS (Cretaceous Inland Seaway, another name for the Western Interior Seaway); it’ll probably be blown out by the time it reaches the high plains phase line, but there’ll still be plenty of rain. Fog is also unlikely to lift today.’

  The right thing to do, with so much uncertainty ahead, would have been to turn about and go back to camp, seeing out the rain in relative safety while the fog lifted.

  Instead, Carrie just nodded and stood to watch the Einosaurs bulldoze their way deeper into the woods.

  Then, without a word, she crouched and began to slowly stalk forward.

  All I could say was, ‘Copy, Skyray,’ and follow her.

  The closeness to the nesting colony became inversely proportional to our mounting excitement. There were indeed Einosaurs but we had to wait while another Ceratopsian herd passed, a bachelor herd of Chasmosaurs. There were maybe a dozen, all verbose and noisy, cracking heads and flashing warpaint at one another. We kept very still during their passing but I did risk a sketch. It was just a few simple lines of graphite that really didn’t capture the energy and majesty of these creatures, but there really was very little that could, beyond seeing them in the chainmailed flesh.

  When we got to the hide, we found we’d had a visit in the night. Rabbit-like droppings were piled in one corner. We cleared them out and remembered to secure the fasteners when we left.

  The hide was set in the axis between two deadfalls, the trunks shrink-wrapped in creepers and vines, and was surrounded by dense shrub. It was on a fairly steep rise which would probably have made it difficult for an adult Einosaur to make it up the slope without sliding back down. As such it remained largely unbrowsed.

  We went through the semblance of a routine, Cassie mounting the Ruger on a tripod and sighting the various points where we thought a Theropod might appear, while I checked in with the Magmatic and made breakfast.

  Then, I set up my optic and took a sweep of the nest, marked any new bodies that might be worth sighting and generally took the lie of the land. With the rain maintaining its even strength, many of the adults in attendance were standing or sitting over their nests, presumably to keep the young from becoming wet and chilled. Less experienced or concerned parents were bearing the rain stoically while they sat beside their wards, who were bundled together.

  There were the usual ne’er-do-wells and privateers present. Varanids, perhaps chilled by the rain, sluggishly picked over one nest just out from the hide. Two of them, one half as big as the other, which made it about 12ft long, tore apart something dead in a tug-of-war. In a rough arc beyond the nests sat a number of Saurornitholestes and Troodonts, apparently content with a bit of inter-species socializing in the rain. They dozed, feathers and down matted, drab and grubby. Several of the raptors sat flank to flank, necks crisscrossed.

  The one up side to the weather was that it dampened down the stench and encouraged the return of our appetites. We ate crackers and pate and drank OJ. We forgot the rules about covering food, something we’d have done without thinking if we’d been at Yosemite. When the Pink Team crew chief came out to pick me up, he looked in the hide and just shook his head.

  Rat-, possum-and racoon-sized mammals darted amongst the nests. One nest seethed with their furry bodies as they scavenged whatever was dead. Probably starved babies or a clutch killed by disease. Whatever the cause, it was rich pickings for the mammals and one would occasionally depart
, belly so swollen it had to waddle away. A Troodon sat nearby. At first I thought it was asleep but then one sly eye eased open to regard the possum as it tumbled to cover.

  The little dinosaur rose slowly, wings tight against its side as though making itself more streamlined. The possum was either reckless or addled with meat and got just that bit too close. The Troodon sprang forward and snapped the neck of the mammal with its jaws and another line of mammal evolution was snapped off at the roots. The Troodon tossed back its head and tried to get the possum down in one and failed. Instead, he dropped it and tore the animal in two between jaws and claws then swallowed it down in halves.

  I drew and Cassie made observations. We checked in with the drones and looked for Theropod signs but there were none. It was early afternoon when the clouds thinned and we had a burst of sun that bought life to the colony. For the first time we saw young Einosaurs being a little more proactive. They began to brave the world beyond the bowl of their nests. Still clumsy, they showed an innate instinct to charge at anything that moved. We laughed when they gambolled after mammals and each other, adults looming over them like mountain ranges.

  Their enjoyment of this brief sunny interlude was interrupted by a huffing cough we knew was a warning to the young, who quickly swarmed back to the nest.

  And here was a first; a Prenoceratops, a distant pig-sized relative of the rhino-sized Einosaurs. It was trotting through the nest site, grimly determined, steering away from adult Einosaurs but eyes everywhere, the mohawk of quills that ran from its hips to the end of its deep tail slung casually to one side. Occasionally it would snap the tail like a pennant, usually at a varanid but seemingly at anything the fearless Neoceratopsian felt deserving of its wrath.

  Finally it found a small varanid dragging half a carcass from a nest, meat that was clearly rotten and rank with maggots, but the Prenoceratops trotted over and with little due diligence, grabbed the body and departed, the varanid left nonplussed.