Raptor Red Read online

  The pack stays at Tick-Bird Meadow for a couple of weeks, hunting in the early morning and late afternoon, coming back to be groomed before sundown. Raptor Red senses that, however desirable the spot seems, they'll have to move soon. Too many other predator groups are shifting their hunting ranges. There's great instability and unrest in the geographic boundaries claimed by raptors and by the bigger, ridge-backed meat-eaters.

  It's a young, turbulent ecosystem. The invasion of Mongolian dinosaurs, and of species from the other direction - from western Europe - has upset an ecological organization many millennia old. The new arrivals seek to establish themselves, stake out territories, protect their food resources, and raise young. But the breeding groups of old-time native species refuse to give up real estate to the invaders. So populations of native and invader are jostling each other, and predator packs are moving hundreds of miles each season, far more than they would in a normal year.

  As the sun sets, coloring the dust clouds kicked up by distant herds, the adult raptors become more alert. The stream valley is so richly stocked with game that many species of predator - large, medium, and small - are being drawn in.

  Late one afternoon, Raptor Red can see silhouettes of meat-eating dinosaurs far away on the horizon. Their body forms are outlined with great sharpness and clarity - as if they were paper cutouts hung in a picture window looking out on the sunset. The distant predators walk slowly, then sit down, flexing knees and ankles.

  Both Raptor Red and her sister pay very close attention to how the unknown predators sit. Raptors sit upright. They have a big cushiony pad of tough skin below and behind their hips. The cushion lies directly below the huge pubic bone, longest and strongest of the hip elements. Since the cushion is oriented aft and downward, raptor torsos are held nearly erect when the raptors are relaxed in sitting position.

  Only raptor species sit this way. All other predators have a built-in pubic cushion that goes straight down from in front of the hips, at a right angle to the backbone. When these nonraptors sit, they lower their torsos into horizontal position.

  One by one the five distant predators sit. Each one lowers its compact torso straight down. Each one sits with its shoulders close to the ground.

  The predators are too far away for the Utahraptors to judge their size directly. But shape is a clue to size.

  Not our kind, the sisters think. Too big - danger. The sisters can see that the unknown predators have short thick necks and deep heavy muzzles. Those shape contours belong to ridge-backed Acrocanthosaurus, giant carnivores that are three tons full grown. Five acros are fifteen tons of unstoppable muscle, tendon, teeth, and jaws. The giant predators hardly ever travel in groups of four or more. These five are brothers from one brood who have not yet split up to find individual mates. Such bachelor packs can be unpredictable and violent.

  The raptor family stays where it is, but both adults rest with eyes half open and nostrils flared. The acros don't stir at all during the night.

  'Hssssssss - grhp!' The raptor sisters rouse the chicks before daybreak and nudge them into movement. The wind has shifted, and the irresistible smell of the Astrodon calf that the raptors killed the day before has reached the five acros. They are getting up, stretching, making high-pitched calls to advertise their presence to any female acro who might be nearby.

  Food and courtship are now conflicting calls for these acros. Two wander away, tracking the scent of a female acro. The three others start toward Tick-Bird Meadow at a fast clip.

  The raptor pack leaves the meadow. It's foolish to contest the Astrodon carcass with three acros. Besides, there isn't much meat left on its body, and hunting should be good elsewhere in the valley.

  The raptor sisters move on a couple of miles. Then they start looking for another big kill - something at least a ton. It's much more economical than trying to feed the pack assorted lesser fry, like turtles, crocs, fish. They spot another iguanodon herd - the valley is overrun with them - and creep around to the upwind side.

  Raptor Red and her sister are just getting into a superb ambush position, hidden in deep reeds by a spring, when a head pops up abruptly a few yards away and stares at them. It's a raptor head - with a red muzzle.

  Another red-muzzled raptor snout pokes up. The sisters realize that they aren't the only pack trying to ambush the iguanodons.

  There's no noise. Neither pack wants to spook the iguanodons.

  Raptor Red is confused. Her sense of smell tells her that both new raptors are young males -and not close blood kin. She doesn't detect any new females nearby. The two males are non-threatening.

  They lower their heads in a quiet head-bob-head-weave. It's a tentative greeting and a prelude to courtship.

  Raptor Red wants a new mate. Her biological urge to bond, brood, and raise chicks of her own is (becoming more insistent every day. She hasn't forgotten her lost mate. But she feels a calling to get on with her reproductive duties - the highest calling any dinosaur can have.

  One of the males advances and begins a more formal courtship dance. He's lithe and graceful and healthy, with smooth motions and not a hint of injury or disease to mar his performance.

  Raptor Red watches coyly. She's heavier than he is, and stronger. All Red Snout females are strong enough to repulse most males. Raptor Red is programmed to make the male prove that he's worthy, that his genes are worthy for making healthy raptor chicks with her.

  The male would score a perfect 10 in difficulty from an Olympic Utahraptor judge - he manages to go through the entire courtship ritual without making any loud sounds or movements that the iguanodons could see.

  This one, this male - very, very, smart. Raptor Red has been courted several times before, but never with such a bravura combination of stealth and exuberance.

  She's making up her mind to forget the hunt for today. She can kill tomorrow ...

  'HssssSSSS.' The iguanodon cows stop feeding, turn their heads, and bellow deep alarm sounds. A stampede begins.

  'HSSSSS.' Raptor Red's sister holds her body high, making exaggerated strides toward the males, flicking her curved handclaws in and out.

  Raptor Red blinks. Her sister is making a full-fledged threat display. She wants to hurt the two males.

  The older chick, who was hiding some distance away, wanders up behind its mother and tries to imitate her hissing malevolence.

  The male looks surprised; his pupils dilate at the sight of the chick. He lowers his body as far as he can and starts to back away.

  Now Raptor Red is pulled by conflicting instincts. She wants that male. He's the finest male she's ever seen - or at least the finest she can remember. She cannot join in her sister's attack.

  But she can't leave her sister's chicks either. Raptor Red watches as the mates withdraw. Her sister returns, still visibly agitated.

  Raptor Red and her sister resume hunting late in the day and kill a plump iguanodon cow. As they sit down to eat the best parts first, Raptor Red can smell the young male nearby, hiding in a ravine. Later on, his scent gets fainter and fainter.

  Her sister comes over to her and lies down. Raptor Red looks at her. She nuzzles Raptor Red and starts to groom her behind her ears, making delicate little bites.

  THE TURTLE OF TRINITY

  LATE MAY

  It's midnight, but Raptor Red is wide awake because she's curious. Something is going on in the pond, and she wants to know what it is. She's been staring at a V-shaped series of tiny waves that means a living animal is moving just under the surface.

  Flip! Up comes a little black scaly face, pushing its armored eyebrows just above the pond's surface. The moonlight catches the crests of the delicate ripples widening as they pass outward from the disturbance. Pop! The eyes open, and a pair of orange-red pupils stare at the shore, where Raptor Red is hunched down, motionless but awake.

  Pip! A bubble of air grows quickly at the tip of the back snout, pauses for a second, and bursts.

  Raptor Red's mind is on automatic-alert mode. She
can't sleep. Her sister is curled up in a temporary nest they made just before dusk. It's two o'clock in the morning.

  'Sssnnnrrhht!' Raptor Red flinches a tiny bit as her sister snores loudly, Tlssssshh.' The pair of eyes and bubble-blowing nose disappear under the pond water.

  Raptor Red is disappointed - she's still curious about that little dark head. She's been watching it for an hour. Raptor Red is a late-night Utahmptor. She was born that way. She falls asleep at sundown but wakes up at midnight. It's genetic, a trait she inherited from her father. Her sister is an early riser. She's fully alert hours before dawn, but she falls asleep two hours after dusk and snores till dawn. Also genetic.

  Siblings differ in their wake-sleep schedules, and evolutionary forces can work on this diversity. A diverse range of genetically fixed behaviors in a brood can ensure that at least some of the youngsters will survive to adulthood, no matter what sort of environmental challenges are thrown at them. A late-night gene may help survival when prey abundance shifts and the only vulnerable victims are herbivores who can be stalked after dusk. An early-riser gene could give just the opposite advantage -the ability to hunt before sunrise.

  Raptor Red knows nothing about evolutionary theory. But she does know that her sister snores. She glares at her sister's sleeping but noisiferous form. Just as her sister inhales in preparation for another snorting-wheezing-honk, Raptor Red reaches out with her left foot and pushes hard.

  Fwwump - ooooph! Her sister rolls onto her side, exhales heavily, stays asleep, and then begins a new cycle of snores, far quieter this time.

  Raptor Red goes back to watching for the head in the pond.

  Just an inch below the water, the head is listening. A wide oval eardrum has been vibrating with each raptor snore. Each 'ssnnrrhht!' has sent high-energy, low-frequency sound waves into the water. Some of the sound energy reflects off the water's surface, but some penetrates, generating pulses of waterborne sound. The big eardrum is designed for just such low-frequency sound. It's a turtle's ear, and it belongs to a Trinitichelys, the Turtle of the Trinity River.

  This Trinity Turtle is a female, only twelve years old and five pounds in weight. This year is the first year she has mated. Her biological clock went into alarm mode during the night. It's time to try the most dangerous thing her genetically programmed lifestyle demands: It's time to come ashore and lay eggs-

  No two minds are more different than the raptor's and the turtle's. The raptor is a bundle of spunky inquisitiveness. She wants to find out about each and every animal in her world. She sniffs strange objects and pokes her snout down holes. She goes out of her way to investigate any strange and new sight. Her mind demands new stimuli, new mysteries to solve.

  The turtle lives a life of comfortable monotony that would bore Raptor Red to death. Walking and swimming slowly over the pond bottom, picking up pieces of soft vegetation and an occasional hunk of dead fish. Crawling out onto a half-submerged log and letting the sun warm her turtle belly, assisting in digestion. For every ten degrees Celsius that the turtle guts warm up, the speed of the digestive process doubles. She crawls back into the pond late in the afternoon.

  Every day the same routine, every day the exact same hundred square yards of pond bottom. Nothing unexpected, nothing exciting. The turtle's body is undemanding. Her internal metabolic furnace needs only one-twentieth as much food per day as a dinosaur of the same size.

  And so she is content to make do with a brain that is tiny and tubular, a brain that lacks the restless curiosity of raptors.

  The Trinity Turtle would be scared into her shell and never come out if she had to deal with the range of stimuli Raptor Red experiences every day.

  Pip. With a faint sound, the turtle pops her head above the surface again. The alarming sound of raptor snoring has stopped. Raptor Red creeps forward toward the water to get a better look. Her feet make a rustling noise against the dry ferns. Raptor Red freezes, but she doesn't have to. Turtle ears can't pick up soft, high frequency sounds. The heavy eardrum and the large ear bone attached to it can't transmit such vibrations.

  But it is perfectly adequate for the turtle's needs. She doesn't have to stalk soft-stepping prey across the forest floor. She doesn't have to listen carefully for subtle variations in the calls of her mate and her siblings. Turtles live a noiseless life. They don't communicate audibly with relatives, and the Trinity Turtle, like most of her sister species, finds food in water.

  Sound is easy to detect underwater. When a crocodile snaps at a fish underwater, the sound waves pass quickly through the aqueous medium and go right through the turtle's body with little impediment. Sound moves through the skin and then the muscle and then the brain tissue itself. So water-loving critters have an easy time hearing low-frequency sounds.

  So there's no need for the Trinity Turtle to be outfitted with the delicate ear bone and complex inner ear of a raptor. The only time she feels a deep-seated anxiety about sound is that one season of the year when she must climb out of her comfortable watery home and seek a suitable sandbank to lay her eggs. Raptor Red watches the turtle head disappear. A line of ripples shows that the turtle is swimming toward shore. Raptor Red crouches down even further, her calf muscles twitching with excitement. She's not hunting now - she and her sister filled their bellies with iguanodon meat late that afternoon. What excites Raptor Red now is finding out something new.

  Inside the turtle brain is the opposite emotion -fear of the unknown. The Trinity Turtle hasn't been out onshore since she herself hatched twelve summers ago. That was the worst day of her life. Being tiny and helpless, cracking open her shell, and ïsmelling a thousand unknown things. Being one of fifty struggling turtle-ettes, all scrambling out of their nest, compelled by instinct to climb up through the sand that their mother piled on top of the eggs. Then instinct shifted gears, and the baby turtles were drawn irresistibly downslope to the smell of water.

  Only two baby turtles made it to the water. The Trinity Turtle saw a brother three inches away get snatched upward in the toothy jaws of a dactyl. Then two sisters climbed over the Trinity Turtle. A second later, they too were pulled to their deaths. Just as the scent of the pond water was becoming sweet and strong, the Trinity Turtle herself was pulled four feet skyward, her left hindfoot pinioned by a set of sharp teeth. Pain, the first pain she had ever felt, paralyzed her left hindquarters. Then there was a flapping of huge, white wings and a snapping sound. Two dactyls were fighting over this turtle morsel.

  She was dropped into the water. The instant she felt the warm summer water engulf her body, a third instinct cut in - to swim down. With three legs flailing madly, she made a crash dive at forty-five degrees, hitting a pond-weed clump at the bottom. She kept going, burying her bruised, half-hour-old turtle body into the mud.

  The baby Trinity Turtle wasted no time grieving over her lost siblings. They meant nothing to her. In the turtle brain there is an almost complete void where the emotional bond between relatives would be in a raptor. The dead sisters and brothers were mere objects in the turtle's environment. Their sudden deaths were useful as a warning that danger was near but had no other significance.

  The Trinity Turtle, like nearly all turtle species, understands and appreciates only one individual -herself. She never saw or even smelled her mother, who scooped out a nest, laid the eggs, covered the nest, and crawled back into the water, never to interact in any way with her progeny afterward. A 'Lay 'em and leave 'em' parent.

  And the Trinity Turtle has never bonded with any brother or sister or any other turtle of her own species or any other species. Her courtship some weeks earlier did take six hours. The competing males had to swim around and around her, trying to impress her with their grace and coordination. She rejected the first five suitors. Mating with the sixth was quick and perfunctory. The male left immediately after the physiological act was completed, and now the Trinity Turtle ignores the male - even when they happen to pass each other in the pond.

  To the turtle, the concept of
'loneliness' is incomprehensible. She always has been alone, and any other social state is unthinkable.

  The Trinity Turtle pushes her whole head and neck out of the water and swivels her face around, searching with eyes and nose. Like most turtles, Trinitichelys has only a mediocre sense of smell in the open air, compared to the olfactory powers of a long-snouted dinosaur or crocodile. The turtle snout is short, and the space for the smelling apparatus is squeezed between the front of the beak and the forwardly located eyeballs. This cramped olfactory chamber is perfectly okay for underwater work, where scent is carried by water currents. But out of the water smelling is much more difficult, because air currents carry only a tiny fraction of the scent-laden molecules that water can transport.