Raptor Red Read online

  At the end of the neck, where the head should be, the monster carries a small, solid ball of bone devoid of eyes, ears, and nose.

  Whunk-CLUNK! Something strong and heavy rams the headless monster and pushes it another ten feet through the horsetail thicket.

  Raptor Red sees a strange, slitlike mouth open up at the base of the creature's neck. The mouth emits a dense cloud of gas.

  Snff-snff - SNFF!

  Raptor Red's snout takes in a sample of the gas. It's methane, mixed with more malodorous scents.

  Her brain rings with recognition: That's belly gas -that's gas from some herbivore's gut!

  She's been watching the monster from the wrong end. The bone ball is at the end of the tail.

  WOOOOOOOO. She sees the real head emerge as the armor-plated beast continues to back up. The deep, resonating hoot comes from the echo chambers in the snout, just in front of an unbelievably wide forehead. Overhanging the large, bright red eyeball is a thick triangle of armor.

  It's a Castonia species, far wider and heavier than the ones Raptor Red has met before.

  WOOOOO - WOOOO - WHUNK!

  The wide-bellied beast's hooting is cut short by a heavy blow to its forehead. Another gaston is ramming from the opposite direction.

  WooWHUNK! The first gaston rams back, meeting its adversary forehead to forehead.

  Then the two combatants pause, their chests heaving with exhaustion. One of the gastons tries to hoot, but its energy level has fallen too low.

  Raptor Red moves quietly around the two grunting beasts. The young male is already in the thicket, standing motionless. The Utahraptor-dappled camouflage works well here. The two predators are nearly invisible.

  WWWWWWOOOP!

  CRASH!

  The thicket opens. Plant debris is flung everywhere. A third bull gaston bursts out of the horsetails and stands bellowing in front of the other two. There's a pause as the three bulls look one another over. The newcomer snorts like a steam locomotive and charges. He rams one of the other bulls with his forehead, hitting his opponent's eyebrow spike and twisting its head around.

  Raptor Red and her young male consort hunker down behind a pile of thick horsetail stems and watch the action.

  The young male has led Raptor Red to a gaston lek, a parcel of land where every year the big armored bulls whack each other on the forehead while the females watch and evaluate the battle. It's dangerous to be around the lek when Gastonia pheromones are in the air, and Gastonia tempers are short-fused.

  Raptor Red knows what all Early Cretaceous meat-eaters know: Armor-plated gastons are nearly immune to all forms of attack. She once watched her parents try and fail to kill small gastons. She's tried herself, with miserable results. The problem isn't the sheer bulk of the gastons - even the biggest are only two tons - smaller than a big iguanodon, much smaller than an astro.

  The problem is the highly active, martial-arts style of gaston defense. Their heads, necks, torsos, and tails are covered with a flexible coat of armor, bone plates from an inch to a foot long, all interconnected within a tightly woven layer of the toughest ligaments.

  Even if it stood stone still, an adult gaston would be very hard for a Utahraptor to kill. The only unprotected spots are the underside of the belly. But gastons don't stand still. When attacked, they lower their spiked heads and lurch forward, swinging their necks back and forth. The row of armor starts above the eye and continues aft along the side of the neck and above the shoulder. One favorite gaston tactic is to twist the forequarters to one side, trapping an unwary predator's leg in a half circle of protruding hornlike points.

  Even more dangerous is the gaston's rear defense. The base of the tail is of exceptional width, and it's all muscle. One quick contractile spasm can pull the entire tail around full circle, driving the tail spikes into the thigh or chest of a carnivore.

  Gastonia and its close kin gravitate to water holes and moist meadows, so nearly every adult Utah-raptor has had at least one run-in with these Early Cretaceous tanks. The results of the confrontations are nearly all the same: Utahraptors with crushed toes, lacerated calf muscles, bruised ribs, and dislocated shoulders.

  However, this young male raptor has a plan. He comes from a family line of Utahraptor that has found a solution to the gaston problem. Generations ago, his ancestors discovered purely by chance the one tactic that will work against an adult bull gaston. Then his grandparents learned it by watching his great-grandparents. His parents learned it by watching his grandparents.

  Carnivores - smart carnivores - are like that. They're flexible. They're observant. So different carnivore family lines tend to acquire a unique set of family heirlooms - bits and pieces of wisdom handed down by the young mimicking the adults.

  The young male leads Raptor Red through the edge of the canebrake. She's very uneasy. Snorting, puffing, hooting bull gastons are all around, ramming each other with vigor.

  The two raptors reach the far side of the cane-brake, where a sluggish stream dissipates itself into a series of shallow pools. There's no ramming of bulls here. There's no loud hooting. This is the loser's locker room where players are sent after they're thrown out of the game. Bull gastons, bruised and battered, trudge over here to get away from the winners, to drink at the pools of water, and to roll in the mud to medicate their wounds.

  Gastons are not smart dinosaurs. Their brains are only slightly larger than a crocodile's of the same body bulk. That's big by cold-blooded standards but puny compared to a raptor's. When gastons are in their herds of up to fifty strong, the massed might of so many armored bodies is better than high intelligence. But when a bull gaston is alone and injured and exhausted, he's at his most vulnerable.

  Raptor Red sees another Utahraptor snout emerge, tentatively, through the six-foot horsetails. It's her sister. She looks nervous too.

  Raptor Red doesn't know what to do next. She looks over to the young male. She'll trust his judgment. This is the first time she has followed the lead of a male since she lost her mate under the dead Astrodon, many days ago.

  Her sister doesn't trust anybody. But she decides to go along with the other two, simply because her chicks are hungry again and the pack hasn't detected any easy prey today. A Utahraptor mother with chicks in tow can't expect to bring home the needed meat by herself.

  The young male moves to the farthest pool and slinks down into the thicket. The two sisters follow closely.

  They watch a sorry parade of defeated bulls. Some are youngsters, gaston males who've tried their luck at the lek for the first time - these chaps are beaten but unbroken. They've withdrawn from combat because they sense that they're not yet heavy enough to meet older bulls on equal terms.

  The middle-aged bulls are more sullen. Many have been fathers in seasons past but were displaced by bulls larger or stronger or meaner. These fellows are still dangerous - they've got pent-up aggression they'll unleash on any animal that happens by.

  Crash! A big bull suddenly turns on a younger male gaston and whacks it on the torso. It's a stupid move. The young bull is armored here with bone spikes, and one of the points jabs the older animal in the eye socket.

  The wounded bull turns around awkwardly and ambles off, hooting. The younger bull backs away, scared.

  The raptors just wait.

  Raptor Red becomes alert. A very wide bull is approaching. He's walking slowly, with even steps. Raptor Red senses that this bull is special. He's not severely injured. He's not limping. But something is missing.

  His light has gone out.

  His eyes have a dull, constant stare. He looks but doesn't focus on anything. He doesn't react to the other defeated bulls.

  Inside his small gaston brain, this male has given up. Too many spring ramming-contests. Too many seasons with his body pumped up with hormones. This is the third year he's left the mating grounds without a female consort, and his biological clock has wound down - he's genetically superfluous. The genes that run his behavior don't provide specific orders
for an elderly loser. Why bother? Even if he tries his best, his chances of fathering offspring next year are too low.

  The young male raptor moves cautiously through the thicket, following the tired bull. Raptor Red and her sister follow.

  The bull plods through a pool of muddy water and lies down. The warm water feels good. He rolls halfway onto his left side, then to his right, letting the mud ooze into countless bruises.

  The male raptor starts to twitch in anticipation.

  The bull drags his body into the deeper part of the wallow. He rolls onto his left side and closes his eyes, his body two-thirds submerged. His brain is lulled into a stupor by the warm, soothing bath.

  The male raptor moves swiftly, quietly. He strikes with his hindfeet at the exposed gaston underside. Raptor Red strikes immediately after.

  The bull howls. His legs flex helplessly. But the raptor attack pushes him onto his back. Raptor Red's sister jumps onto his belly and rips him open. The older chick joins her mother, attacking with adult-style ferocity.

  The bull gaston's mind succumbs to the attack before his body does. He's aware of his own death, but in the final moments he is free of pain and fear.

  The raptor pack feeds on the bull for three hours, ignored by the other gastons, who feel no loss at his death. Raptor Red's sister eats with noisy satisfaction - this is the first time she's had Gastonia bull, and she finds its texture and taste quite satisfying. She bumps and nuzzles Raptor Red in gestures of victory and appreciation. She nuzzles her oldest chick too, in celebration of her taking on the mature role of killer.

  Raptor Red's sister is in a rare good mood. But she still won't look at the young male and she won't acknowledge his headbobbing. He tries to bump her snout with his, but she answers with a curled-lip snarl, and he backs away and sits by himself. Raptor Red looks back and forth, from her sister to her male consort. Then she gives him an especially long, affectionate muzzle-nuzzle.

  When night falls, the well-fed chicks find their usual sleeping places, side by side next to their mother. Raptor Red pushes open a space between a chick and her sister with her right foot and lowers herself down. She closes her eyes.

  Something isn't right, and she snaps her eyelids open. The male is still standing up, looking around awkwardly, sniffing in the direction of the raptor sisters. He shuffles off to a pile of dry brush and starts to scrape a temporary nest together with his hindclaws. Raptor Red notices that he is very unskillful at this activity.

  Raptor Red sits up. It's warm and comforting, being wedged among her blood relatives. Still, she has a churning feeling in her head and it gets worse as she watches the male's pitiful attempts to construct his nest.

  She extends her knees and ankle joints, rising above her snoring kin, and steps out of the sleeping group. The hole she leaves among the somnolent bodies is immediately filled by a chick leaning to its left and her sister leaning to her right.

  Raptor Red walks over to the male and knocks him in the flank with her snout. Then she gathers fallen branches with vigorous sweepings of her hands and feet. There aren't enough, so she reaches up with her jaws and breaks down some fresh branches from the trees.

  When the nest is big enough for two, she sits. The male stares for a minute, walks slowly over to her and lowers his body with great care, leaving a foot of space between their torsos.

  Raptor Red sighs and leans toward him. As she drifts off to sleep, she can feel him just barely begin to apply his own body pressure back toward her.

  FAMINE AND THE WING SHADOW

  AUGUST

  It's the time of summer drought. Streams fail, and the ponds dry up into dead layers of sun-hardened mud. The herds of plant-eaters flee the lowlands, and the predators who remain must squabble over a dwindling supply of meat. And it's the time when famine pulls apart the social bonds of Utahraptor packs. The carnivore parents become lax in watching where their youngsters wander off to.

  The alpha male deinonych can't believe his good fortune. There, within easy striking distance, is a Utahraptor chick, wandering alone, without an adult in sight. The deinonych holds his 130-pound body as low as he can and chirps a hurry up! message to his two brothers.

  We can kill that chick - before its parents know we're here, he thinks. He's hungry. But he'd try to kill the chick even if he were well fed. Predator species have spite hardwired into their behavior. Killing the competition before it's grown up is always a good ecological strategy for meat-eaters.

  The little Utahraptor chick has wandered off from its pack for the first time in its life. There's no food back at the temporary nest the adults have built, and the baby raptor is sniffing at holes where the multis hide, the roly-poly furballs shaped like wood-chucks.

  'Chck-chck-chck... chck. ' The chick runs to a hole where a plump multi is making its alarm call.

  Fwwoop! The multi disappears down its burrow as if it were sucked by a vacuum.

  'Chck-chck-chck-chck-CHCK!' Another multi twenty feet away makes a loud protestation at the chick's presence. The foolish little Utahraptor turns and runs at him.

  Just as the chick reaches his burrow, the multi ducks underground, and a third furball starts clicking his lungs out ten yards in the other direction.

  Stupid chick - this will be easy, the deinonych leader thinks as he watches the little raptor get dizzy running back and forth across the multi colony.

  The alpha deinonych crawls along a dry arroyo till he's at the edge of the colony. With every zigzag maneuver, the chick gets closer and closer to the hidden predators. The furballs are so busy playing the decoy game with the chick that they don't notice the deinonychs.

  But up at three hundred feet, a very alert set of eyes has been watching. A huge white dactyl has been making silent spirals down from a thousand-foot altitude. He banks steeply to his left and makes a low-angle pass at the multi colony.

  Dust clouds erupt in the overgrazed soil between the multi burrows. The dactyl's immense white wings stir up a tornado of dried multi droppings and plant bits, and the swirling maelstrom of dirt and dung blinds the deinonychs. The Utahraptor chick falls over, gets up, runs back toward its nest, trips in a multi hole, gets up again, and is gone from view before the dust settles and the deinonychs can see what has happened.

  To the deinonychs and the Utahraptor, the situation is life or death. To the dactyl, it's a game.

  The dactyl climbs to five hundred feet to survey the scene he's created. He likes intervening in the lives of predators - it amuses him. He's spent all his waking hours amusing himself, ever since that day in the spring when he decided he would not take a mate.

  The great white dactyl is a very special case. He's sixty years old, healthy, fit, his senses keen. He's observed many generations of raptors in their struggles to raise families. He's helped raise dozens of broods of his own species, with the help of five mates, all now dead.

  Dactyls live longer than dinosaurs - a general advantage of life on the wing. If it survives the dangers of youth, a young adult dactyl can look forward to thirty or forty years, average lifespan. This particular dactyl is an old-timer even by pterodactyl standards. And he has decided this year that he has had enough. He will never breed again. He's a biological oddity - a widower who is content.

  The hidden hand of natural selection is nearly everywhere. Every time a dinosaur makes a choice that affects its reproductive success, the beast is playing the evolution game. Every time a bird helps her sister or her daughter or her granddaughter raise a brood, the act is recorded in the book of genetic success. Every time a turtle seeks a mate, the deed affects the standing of the turtle's genes in the Darwinian playoff.

  But the old dactyl has bowed out of the Great Game. He's ended his own contribution to his gene pool entirely. He doesn't breed himself, and he doesn't help his kin to breed. In fact, he avoids all others of his species. He's outlived his Darwinian usefulness, and he's enjoying it immensely.

  Joy is built in by evolution to keep animals doing what's good for
their genes. The great white dactyl flies because it gives him pleasure. Since he has given up the responsibilities of reproduction, he's free to make up the rules of life as he goes along. He likes soaring to heights where he can spy on the earthbound dinosaurs below. He likes flaunting his aerial expertise by zooming at the predators who rule the underbrush.

  Pound for pound, his brain is even larger for his size than the raptors', and big brains demand to be exercised. So the white dactyl invents games. He dives at giant plant-eating dinosaurs, just to see them panic and mill around nervously, the adults trying to shield their calves. He zips close to the water when the crocs are sunning themselves. He likes to see the long sequence of splashes erupt as one crocodile after another launches itself into the algae-green water.

  And the old dactyl likes eating. He likes sharks, lungfish, pond turtles, baby crocodiles, and the eggs of other dactyl species. The drought has cut off his seafood and poultry, but he's in no danger of gastronomic deprivation. He has learned how to get Utahraptors to serve him aged red meat.