Dinosaur Trouble

by Dick King-Smith

  “No,” said Banty. “They probably won’t even notice I’m gone.”

  “Well, come on, then,” said Nosy. “I’ll fly very slowly above to show you the way.”

  And to keep a good lookout for You-Know-Who, he thought.

  Before long, Banty was standing in the pterodactyls’ wood, looking up at Clawed and Aviatrix as they hung, still asleep above her. They were on a fresh branch because, the previous evening, Nosy had persuaded his parents to move. He didn’t want Banty to have to stand in a bed of deep, pongy poo.

  “Mom, Daddy, wake up!” he called, hitching onto the branch beside them. “I’ve brought my friend Banty to meet you.”

  Aviatrix opened her eyes and looked down in horror at the baby apatosaurus. The shock rendered her speechless.

  “Good morning, Nosy’s mom,” said Banty in the politest of tones. “I’m very pleased to meet you. Nosy thought I might like to see the wood where you live. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “It’s pulchritudinous,” said Nosy.

  “Nosy tells me,” said Banty, “that you have taught him a great many long words. You must be very clever.”

  “Sagacious,” said Nosy.

  “That, too,” said Banty.

  “The epithets are synonymous,” said Aviatrix.

  Quite a nice little thing, she thought. Well, not little, but nice. Good manners.

  At this point Clawed woke up. He was about to do a poo, always his first act of the day, but seeing what stood below him, he refrained.

  “Who’s this?” he said.

  “My friend, Daddy,” said Nosy.

  “Good morning, sir,” said Banty.

  Clawed was so astonished at being addressed with such respect that he almost fell off the branch.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Her name is Banty, Daddy,” said Nosy, “and I’ve brought her to see you and Mom for a very special reason, knowing how clever you both are.”

  Aviatrix looked very pleased at this, Clawed very puzzled.

  “And what is this very special reason?” asked Aviatrix.

  “I want you to warn her,” said Nosy.

  “Warn her? Against what?”

  “T. rex.”

  “What’s that?” asked Banty.

  “Tyrannosaurus rex,” replied Aviatrix. “The fiercest of the carnivores.”

  “Please, Nosy’s Mom—what is a carnivore?”

  “A meat-eater. And stop calling me ‘Nosy’s Mom.’ My name is Aviatrix.”

  “And mine’s Clawed,” said Clawed, “but you can go on calling me ‘sir’ if you like—I quite fancy it.”

  “Hang on a minute,” said Nosy.

  “We all are,” said Clawed, taking a fresh grip on the branch with his large talons.

  “No, Daddy, I mean, let me tell you what’s worrying me. You can see that Banty’s parents have never told her about T. rex, though I don’t know why. Which means she’s in terrible danger if she ever comes across one.”

  “She is vulnerable,” said Aviatrix.

  “What’s that mean, Avy?” asked Clawed.

  “Capable of being physically wounded or injured or, in Banty’s case, killed and eaten.”

  Banty shuddered (and when an apatosaurus, even a small one, shudders, it’s quite a sight).

  “What does this awful thing look like?” she said, and the two adult pterodactyls told her, each in its own way.

  Aviatrix’s description was full of long words like formidable, terroristic, repulsive, and unprepossessing.

  Clawed, who understood none of these adjectives, simply said, “Big and scary.”

  “But surely, sir,” said Banty, “this T. rex creature couldn’t kill something as big as an apatosaurus?”

  “Easily,” said Clawed.

  “And you’re only a baby one,” said Aviatrix.

  By now she had warmed to this odd-looking, innocent young animal.

  “You must take great care, Banty, dear,” she said. “We can always escape by flying, but you can’t.”

  “Mom, Daddy,” said Nosy, “please could you do my friend here a big favor?”

  “Indubitably,” said his mother, “and before you ask me, Clawed, that means without a doubt.”

  “What d’you want?” asked Clawed.

  “Could you both come over to the lake with me so that you can meet Banty’s parents? Neither of us knows why, but they don’t seem to like pterodactyls, and you don’t like apatosauruses. Banty and I are friends, but wouldn’t it be nice if we were all friends—both families, I mean?”

  “Would you like us to come, Banty?” Nosy’s mother asked.

  “Oh yes, I would, please!”

  “Then we will,” said Clawed. “I could do with a drink anyway.”

  9

  “Banty! Banty!” called Gargantua and Titanic as they lumbered around the rim of the lake, but there was no response.

  When they stopped to get their breath, at a point that chanced to be the nearest to the distant woods, Gargantua gasped, “It couldn’t have taken her, could it?”

  Titanic looked puzzled.

  “What couldn’t have taken who?” he asked.

  “That T. rex we’ve just seen, you fool,” said Gargantua. “Could it have taken our Banty?”

  Titantic considered.

  “Don’t think so,” he said. “It didn’t have anything in its mouth, and we weren’t submerged long enough for it to have time to—”

  “Stop!” cried Gargantua. “Don’t say it.” And she shuddered the most enormous apatosaurian shudder.

  Just then they saw, flying toward them from the direction of the woods, three pterodactyls. There was a little one, a big one, and a very big one.

  “We could ask those wotchermecallits if they’ve seen her,” Titanic said.

  “Pterodactyls!” said Gargantua scornfully. “They wouldn’t know the difference between an iguanodon and a triceratops. Stupid things! I’ve no use for them.”

  At that moment the small pterodactyl detached itself from the two much larger ones, which were flying very slowly, and flew very quickly toward the apatosauruses.

  “Ugh!” said Gargantua. “One of them is coming straight to us. If it speaks, don’t answer, Titanic.”

  “Good morning!” squeaked Nosy when he reached them. “I’ve a favor to ask you. Could I introduce my mom and my daddy to you?” There was no answer.

  “Oh,” said Nosy, “we’ve got Banty with us,” he added.

  “What?” bellowed both apatosauruses.

  “We’ve got Banty. We’ve brought her home,” said Nosy. “Look, you can see her now.”

  Titantic and Gargantua stretched up their long necks to the fullest extent, and there was their missing daughter, coming toward them, escorted by the two big pterodactyls, which were flying very slowly above her.

  “Oh, my Banty!” called Gargantua, waddling forward. “You’re safe!”

  “Ma thought you might have been eaten by that T. rex,” said Titanic.

  “Oh, you saved her!” cried Gargantua to Aviatrix and Clawed. “You saved my Banty! Oh, how can we ever thank you enough?”

  Clawed looked extremely puzzled.

  “Saved her?” he began, but Aviatrix quickly interrupted him.

  “We are glad to have been of help,” she said to Gargantua. “We weren’t sure if Banty was aware of certain dangers.”

  “Like T. rex,” said Clawed. “Although actually …”

  “Be quiet a minute, Clawed,” said Aviatrix, and “Hang on, Daddy,” said Nosy, a suggestion that his father instantly obeyed, on a branch of the nearest tree.

  Aviatrix and Nosy, hovering above, looked down at Banty, and she looked up at them, and each knew exactly what the others were thinking.

  Let my ma and pa believe that the pterodactyl family did rescue me somehow, thought Banty, just as Aviatrix and Nosy thought, Let’s pretend we did rescue her. That way they’ll be very grateful and we’ll all be the best of friends.

  Whe
n the apatosaruses had finished nuzzling the child they thought they had lost, Gargantua started to make a speech.

  “First of all,” she said to Aviatrix and Nosy, “please do join your, er …”

  “Husband,” said Aviatrix.

  “Daddy,” said Nosy.

  “ … on that branch. So much less tiring than having to beat your wings all the time,” and when they took her advice, she went on to address the three of them.

  “I cannot begin to tell you,” she said, “how grateful Titanic …”

  “Your husband?” said Aviatrix.

  “My daddy,” said Banty.

  “ … how grateful we are to all of you for saving our beloved child. We have met dear little Nosy before and now are honored to be introduced to his parents, though I fear I do not know your names.”

  “Aviatrix,” said Nosy’s mother.

  “Clawed,” said his father.

  “I,” said Banty’s mother, “am Gargantua, and my husband, Titanic, and we are the happiest apatosauruses in the world thanks to your pterodactylic heroism in rescuing our Banty from the clutches of T.rex.”

  “But—,” said Clawed.

  “Hang on, dear,” said Aviatrix.

  “I am hanging on.”

  “If you will allow me to say so,” went on Aviatrix, “I think that perhaps you, as Banty’s parents, should have made her more aware of the danger posed by a certain carnivore …”

  “T. rex,” said Clawed.

  “ … danger,” continued Aviatrix, “of which she may have known nothing.”

  “We should! We should!” cried Gargantua. “Just think, Titanic, she might have become the prey of that T. rex that came to the lake if this brave pterodactyl family had not somehow rescued her. Oh, how grateful we are to you all!”

  Clawed, as so often, looked puzzled.

  “We rescued her, did we, Avy?” he asked.

  “Of course we did!” said Aviatrix and Nosy.

  Now Titanic cleared his very long throat.

  “As head of the family,” he said to Clawed, “I must thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart.”

  Clawed had by now realized that, what with one thing and another, he had not yet performed what was usually his first act of the day, and in some confusion at this thought and at once again being addressed as “sir,” he became muddled and replied, “It is I who must thank you, from the heart of my bottom.”

  Then he spread his huge wings and flew hastily away to a branch on another tree, where he did his morning poo out of sight of the rest.

  10

  That first meeting, with all its misunderstanding of Banty’s “rescue,” did indeed lead to friendship between the two families of dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

  The mothers in particular became great friends. They would now meet regularly by the lake or on the near part of the Great Plain. Obviously this was simpler, for the pterodactyls could fly to these meetings. The adult apatosauruses would have had great difficulty in making their way into the woods. Trees would be falling everywhere before the impact of their bulk.

  “It will be so much easier for you, Gargantua,” said Aviatrix. “It’s not the least trouble for us to fly to the lake or the Great Plain or wherever we want to meet. We are, after all aeronauts of remarkable facility and versatility.”

  “How I admire the way you have with words, Aviatrix,” said Gargantua. “It is such a pleasure to talk with you. And you are all such good fliers.”

  I just said that, thought Aviatrix. Ah well, maybe I can improve her vocabulary. Which, to some extent, she did.

  Gargantua learned to say perambulate instead of walk, enumerate instead of count, cogitate or deliberate instead of think, and many other long words that, though familiar to Aviatrix, were quite new to the apatosaurus.

  “Not the most erudite of creatures, those apatosauruses,” said Aviatrix to her husband later.

  “Come again?” said Clawed.

  “They don’t know very much.”

  “Oh,” said Clawed. “Not as much as we do, eh?”

  As I do, said Aviatrix to herself.

  “She’s not too bad,” she said. “What d’you think of him?”

  “Who?”

  “Titanic.”

  “Oh, him. Well, he’s a fine figure of an apatosaurus, I must say.”

  And he called me “sir,” he thought. Not a bad start.

  “He’s all right,” he said. “Probably not all that clever, like we are.”

  If Aviatrix had possessed eyebrows, she would have raised them.

  “Perhaps you could teach him a thing or two, Clawed,” she said.

  Fat chance, she thought.

  Meanwhile, Banty’s parents were talking about the pterodactyls.

  “I must tell you, Titanic,” said Gargantua, “that I have changed my mind about little Nosy’s mother and father.”

  “Have you, Gargy?” said her husband. “Because they rescued Banty, you mean?”

  “Of course. But also because they turned out to be much brighter than I thought they’d be.”

  “He was?” asked Titanic.

  He, too, would have raised his eyebrows if he’d had any.

  “Well, perhaps not,” replied Gargantua, “but she seemed quite intelligent.”

  Now, when one set of parents met the other, usually by the lake, it was generally mother who talked to mother, and father to father. Because of the great difference between the two species, these conversations were always conducted in the same way. Each pterodactyl would fly to, and hang from, a branch high enough for each apatosaurus to stretch its very long neck to the fullest extent. Then each was able to speak to the other, face-to-face, one face, of course, being upside down.

  The mothers talked about all kinds of different things. Their conversations were lively—and filled with long words. It was somewhat different when Clawed met Titanic.

  To begin with, neither male quite liked to look the other in the eye. Their faces may have been close, but Titanic tended to look up into the sky or out to the lake or over to the Great Plain, while Clawed, partly because he was upside down and partly because talking to Titanic made him feel sleepy, usually stared straight down at the ground. In contrast to the conversations of their mates, theirs were short and pretty dull.

  Clawed would fly in and hang up, and Titanic would make his heavy way to the tree in use and stand beneath it and stretch up his long neck. A typical exchange might be as follows:

  Clawed: Morning.

  Titanic: Good morning, sir. I trust you’re well?

  C: Not too bad.

  Longish pause.

  C: Nice weather.

  T: A trifle hot, I fear, for someone of my size.

  Makes walking tiring. This last word would make Clawed yawn.

  T: How fortunate you are, sir, to have the gift of flight. How pleasant it must be in the upper air.

  C: Yes.

  T: Your family well?

  C: Yes.

  Longish pause.

  C: Any sign of T. rex?

  T: No, I think he must be on the other side of the Great Plain.

  C: Hope he stays there.

  Short pause.

  T: If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll go down to the lake for some waterweed, if I may?

  C: Please do.

  T plods heavily off.

  C goes heavily to sleep.

  These family meetings between the pterodactyls and the apatosauruses suited Nosy and Banty perfectly. With their parents close by in case of trouble, they could spend time together, chatting and playing.

  They invented some games, like hide-and-seek, where Nosy closed his eyes and counted to a hundred, while Banty went to the lake and submerged. Then, when time was up, Nosy would skim the surface of the water, searching for those two little nostrils that were all that would show of his friend.

  Another game was “Cry T. Rex!” Nosy would wait till Banty was peacefully grazing and then he’d suddenly fly hastily toward her, squeaking, “
T. rex! T. rex! Run, Banty!” and she would run (or rather waddle) as quickly as she could for the safety of the lake, while Nosy watched happily.

  To pay him back for frightening her, Banty would sneak up behind a branch on which he was hanging, as quietly as she could, and then suddenly cry, “T. rex! T. rex! Scramble, Nosy!” She would grasp the branch in her mouth and shake it violently as the awful monster might have done, and then roar with laughter as Nosy flew off in a panic.

  The thought of T. rex was in everyone’s minds, but for a long time there was mercifully no sign of Hack the Ripper.

  He was hunting on the far side of the Great Plain, where many dinosaurs had laid their eggs some months ago. Now there were dozens of nice fat newly hatched babies that made easy and very tasty meals for Hack. A river ran by this side of the plain, so that there was no need for the tyrannosaurus to visit the lake for a drink.

  But gradually the slow brains of brachiosaurus or iguanodon or triceratops took in the fact that they were losing a lot of their babies, and that perhaps they had better migrate across the plain.

  The herds made for the lake, thinking they would escape from Hack the Ripper.

  But they were to be disappointed.

  He followed.

  11

  Both Nosy’s and Banty’s families noticed that there were a great many more dinosaurs around the place. Though there was as yet no sign of the T. rex, they became worried that Hack might come to hunt there again.

  The three pterodactyls took it upon themselves to do regular aerial surveys of that part of the Great Plain nearest to the lake. Flying up to a good height, they had a fine pterosaur’s-eye view and would be able to give warning in time for the apatosaurus family to take cover underwater, save for their nostrils.

  Aviatrix then arranged a duty roster. Each morning she would fly out first, to be relieved later by Nosy, who in turn gave way to his father. (Clawed did not like early rising.)