The Case of the Dinosaur Birds

by John R. Erickson

  “Thanks, Drover. You’re a little weenie sometimes, but at least your heart’s in the right place.”

  “Yeah, it’s feeling a little better now.”

  “Really? Then why don’t you . . .” He collapsed and began kicking his legs in the air. “Never mind. I’ll be better off without you.”

  “Oh, the guilt!”

  With Drover’s moans echoing in my ears, I marched away from headquarters and set my sights on the two large, mysterious dinosaur birds that were lurking in my pasture.

  I had come up with a plan of battle, and it was pretty simple: no battle. No sir, before I jumped into combat with a couple of dinosaur birds, I needed to do a little spying and gather some information.

  Creeping from bush to bush and weed to weed, I inched forward until I was able to establish a Forward Listening Post, maybe twenty yards away from the birds. Actually, I was kind of surprised that I was able to get so close without being detected.

  Don’t forget, they had Bacon Radar. Hmmm. Maybe Bacon Radar only worked on bacon, and . . . well, I wasn’t bacon. That made sense.

  They appeared to be in the midst of an argument, so absorbed in their own conversation, they didn’t notice me. That was good. I wasn’t quite ready to announce myself.

  Anyway, let’s run through a description of these rare dinosaur birds. They were as big as geese and had long skinny legs with webbed feet fastened to the ends of their legs; brown feathers all around except on the underside, which was white; broad wingspread, about as wide as a buzzard’s; and a head . . .

  That was the part I couldn’t believe. It was about the weirdest head I’d ever seen or even thought about seeing. It was mostly BEAK except for a pair of little eyes, and we’re talking about a beak that was two feet long!

  These were very strange-looking creatures. No wonder they had almost vanished from the face of the Earth. They looked so silly, they had been invited to leave.

  Crouching flat against the ground, I activated Earatory Scanners and began pulling in their conversation. Right away, I was able to establish their names and identities. The bigger and younger of the two was named Freddy. The other of the two appeared to be a little old woman, and Freddy called her Momma. This led me to suspect that maybe Freddy was the son and Momma was . . . well, his mother, and maybe that’s obvious.

  Anyway, they were involved in some kind of heavy discussion, and Momma seemed to be in a bad mood. Here, let’s switch on the speakers so you can listen.

  Chapter Seven: I Meet a Real Dinosaur Bird

  Are you ready to listen in on a conversation between two Terradogtail Dinosaur Birds? Here we go.

  [Speakers on. Quiet! Roll tape.]

  Momma: You never look at a map.

  Freddy: Now, Momma . . .

  Momma: You never ask for directions.

  Freddy: Now, Momma . . .

  Momma: You never stop for food. You just fly, fly, fly, and now we’re as lost as a couple of bunny rabbits!

  Freddy: Momma, we’re not lost. I think we’re in Port Isabel. See, there’s the lighthouse right over yonder.

  Momma: That ain’t a lighthouse, it’s a windmill!

  Freddy: Now, Momma, sometimes you’re right, but this time you’re wrong. We don’t have windmills on the Gulf Coast.

  Momma covered her face with both wings and let out a moan. “Freddy, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the past three days. This ain’t the Gulf Coast! You flew right into the middle of a hurricane and have got us so lost, we’ll never get back.”

  Freddy squinted at a windmill in the distance. “You know, it does look a little bit like a windmill, don’t it?”

  “Because it is a windmill!”

  “Shhh. Momma, don’t talk so loud. Somebody might be listening.”

  “Let ’em listen, I don’t give a rip. Take me home!”

  Freddy glanced around in a full circle. “Uh . . . Momma, we need to talk. Remember that left turn we made at Harlingen? I’m thinking maybe we should have gone straight.”

  Momma stared at him with an open beak. “Straight? That’s what I told you!”

  “Momma, sometimes you mumble your words.”

  “Well, I ain’t mumbling now. You have brung me out into the desert!”

  Freddy seemed at a loss for words. He shuffled his feet and glanced around. “Well, it’s kind of a pretty desert. Look at all the nice cactus.”

  “I don’t want to look at the cactus! Take me home!”

  At that very moment, Freddy’s gaze landed on me. His eyes popped wide-open, and he let out a gasp. “Momma, be real quiet. I think I’m seeing a wolf over yonder in some weeds.”

  “A wolf!”

  “Shh, not so loud. Yes, it’s a wolf. See? Lookie yonder.”

  Freddy pointed a wing at me. Momma squinted her eyes. “That’s a dog, Freddy.”

  “No, ma’am, that’s a wolf.”

  “He don’t look smart enough to be a wolf.”

  Freddy took a closer look. “You could be right. Maybe he’s a dog, sure ’nuff.”

  “He’s a dog. Go ask him where we’re at.”

  “Momma, what if he tries to eat me?”

  “Don’t let him.”

  “Well . . .” Freddy nodded his head and shuffled his feet. “I guess I could try. You wait right here. I don’t imagine this’ll take long.”

  “Ask him which way’s the ocean.”

  “Momma, I can handle this. You just try to be calm, hear?”

  Freddy clasped his wings behind his back and began shuffling in my direction. It appeared that I was about to get acquainted with a genuine Terradogtail Dinosaur Bird.

  He came waddling up to me, and when I say “waddling,” I mean waddling. The guy walked like a duck, swinging his body back and forth, and his face . . . that was the oddest face I’d ever seen, all beak and two little eyes. Under different circumstances, I might have laughed out loud, but this was the wrong time to be laughing.

  Never estimunderate your enemy, I always say. The ones who look the silliest might turn out to be the most dangerous. Silliness can be a clever disguise.

  He walked up to me and stopped. “Hi there. We seen you in the weeds. How are the weeds today?”

  Well, I had been exposed, and there was no need in trying to pretend that I wasn’t there, so I rose to my full height and gave him a stern glare. “The weeds are swell.”

  “Good, good. Say, you ain’t a wolf, are you?”

  “I’m a dog.”

  “Oh good. That’s what Momma said, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “Hank the Cowdog, Head of Ranch Security. I’m here to conduct an interrogation. What are you doing here?”

  He scowled. “Well, Momma and I were just talking about that, and the truth is . . . we might be lost.” He glanced around. “Which way’s the beach?”

  “We don’t have a beach.”

  “How far is it to Port Isabel?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Well, that’s not good.” He turned to his mother. “Momma, he says he’s never heard of Port Isabel.”

  She threw her wings in the air. “See? I knew it!”

  He turned back to me. “Well sir, I guess we’re lost, sure ’nuff.” He grinned and stuck out his right wing. “Name’s Freddy.”

  I paced away from him. “We know your name, Freddy, and this isn’t a social occasion. We’ve had you under surveillance for weeks. We know that you made a wrong turn, flew into a hurricane, got blown off course, and landed here—illegally, I might add. You thought that windmill over there was a lighthouse, and your mother’s mad at you.” I whirled around and faced him. “How am I doing?”

  He was amazed. “I’ll be switched. How’d you know all that?”

  “Surveillance, Freddy. It’s what we do. We’ve put together a huge file
. We know that you stole the bacon—don’t bother to deny it; we have a witness. We even know how you did it, with a secret weapon called a Bacon Beacon.”

  “No sir, we thought it was a lighthouse, but it turned out to be a windmill. See it over yonder?” He pointed his wing to the north. “Windmills don’t have a beacon.”

  The air hissed out of my lungs, and I paced away from him. This was going nowhere. Was Freddy as dumb as he seemed, or was this some kind of clever anti-interrogation technique? At this point, I didn’t know.

  “Okay, Freddy, let’s try another question. Do you eat dogs? I must know.”

  He rocked up and down on his toes and scowled. “Well, I don’t, but let me ask Momma.” He yelled, “Momma, he wants to know if you’ve ever ate a dog!”

  She screeched, “Ate a dog! What are y’all doing over there?”

  “Well, he’s a guard dog and he’s asking questions and . . . I don’t know. He wants to know if you’ve ever ate a dog.”

  “No! I eat fish! Quit fooling around and take me home!”

  Freddy turned back to me and shrugged. “She eats fish.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s good news.”

  “Well, it ain’t so good if you’re in the middle of a desert. Momma gets a little cranky when she don’t get her morning fish.”

  “Freddy, it’s good news that dinosaur birds don’t eat dogs. If she did, you and I would be drawn into a deadly . . . Why are you staring at me?”

  His beak had dropped open, and his eyes were wide. “Did you say that my momma looks like a dinosaur?”

  “Well . . . yes, of course I did. Look at her, Freddy. Is that a hummingbird? A warbler?” Suddenly it dawned on me that I had blundered into a family secret. “You haven’t told her? She doesn’t know her true identity?”

  Freddy’s silence said it all. The poor woman was a living fossil, and her own son hadn’t told her!

  Well, I hadn’t planned on spending half my day doing family counseling with a couple of prehistoric relics, but . . . well, there was something about this case that touched my heart. I mean, Freddy struck me as kind of a goofball but, on the whole, a decent sort of fellow.

  It was obvious that this family was in a crisis. Would I help them or just send them down the road?

  Chapter Eight: I Try to Help a Family in Need

  In my line of work, we have to guard against being tenderhearted. That’s why we wrap ourselves in layer after layer of steel and iron. That’s why the general public thinks that we Heads of Ranch Security have no feelings. We’re tough because we have to be tough, but once in a while . . .

  I began pacing back and forth, as I often do when my mind is trying to wrap itself around the taco meat of Life. “We know all about your secret. Your mother’s a dinosaur, and you’ve never told her. Fredly, Frankie, I’m shocked that you’ve withheld the truth. What kind of son are you, anyway?”

  He thought about that for a minute. “Well, I’m the kind that don’t have nerve enough to tell his momma she’s a dinosaur.”

  “That’s exactly my point, Frankie. She needs to know.” I stopped pacing and delivered my next words in a firm voice. “She looks totally weird and doesn’t even know why!”

  His eyes bugged out. “You think my momma looks weird?”

  “Of course I do! Look at her! Look at that nose!”

  He squinted at his mother. “Well . . . she looks just like me, only a hundred years old.”

  “Frank, she looks like . . . may I call you Frank? I mean, Frankie sounds a little childish, don’t you think? At some point, we have to grow up.” I resumed my pacing. “Frank, your mother looks like a Terradogtail Dinosaur . . . because she is, and she deserves to know why everyone laughs when she walks down the street!”

  He took a step backward. “Who’s been laughing at my momma?”

  “Frank, listen to me. I’m speaking to you as a friend. Our mothers give us their love and devotion. The least we can do is tell them the truth.”

  He scratched the top of his head with the tip of his wing. “Well, I have to admit there’s been times when I thought she looked a little old-fashioned.”

  “There we go! You’ve made the first step toward the truth. Fossils always look old-fashioned. It’s a reality that can’t be denied. Just tell her.”

  He rolled his eyes up to the sky. “She ain’t going to like this.”

  “It might hurt her feelings at first, but in the long run, she’ll be glad to know. I mean, deep inside, we all crave the truth. We want to know who we are and where we came from.”

  “Well, that don’t sound exactly like Momma, but if you think we ought to tell her . . .”

  “I do, Frank, I really do.” I placed a paw across his back. “Come on, pal; I’ll go with you and give you some moral support. Everyone will feel a lot better when this is out in the open. Let’s go.”

  Together, my new friend and I walked toward the poor lady with the outrageous beak. It was a pretty touching moment. Just think about it. These birds and I were separated by thousands of years. They were living fossils, and I belonged to the modern age. We were different in every way you can imagine, yet our lives had been brought together by a simple yearning for The Truth.

  It almost brought tears to my eyes. There I was, a very important dog, befriending the homeliest birds I had ever seen. Did I laugh at them, call them names, make fun of their appearance? No sir. The fact that they were incredibly ugly hardly even entered my mind.

  Okay, it entered my mind. Who could ignore it? But the important thing is that I didn’t dwell upon the differences between us. I looked instead to the qualities beneath the skin and hair and feathers, the qualities that pointed to the Brotherhood of All Animals.

  And fellers, you talk about an emotional scene! Words could hardly express how wonderful I felt about myself as I marched side by side with the second-ugliest bird in the whole world. (His mother was in first place.)

  We walked up to her and stopped. Her head jerked around and, yipes, she already looked crabby, and we hadn’t even given her any bad news. Frank reached out a wing and gave her a pat. “Momma, this here is . . . what was your name again?”

  “Hank the Cowdog.”

  “That’s right. You’re Hank and I’m Freddy.”

  “I thought you were Frank.”

  “No, I’m Freddy, been Freddy all my life. Freddy Pelican.”

  “Pelican? Is that French?”

  “Thousand Island.” He gave me a wink and chuckled to himself. Was that funny? He thought so, but I had no time for jokes. His grin faded, and he turned back to his mother. “Momma, this here is Hank the Cowdog. He’s in charge of security around here.”

  Her gaze stuck me like a fork. “What does he think, we’re going to rob a bank?”

  “Momma, just listen. Hank’s an important feller, and there’s something he wants to tell you.” He turned to me and gave me an expectant nod. “Go ahead, Hank.”

  “I thought you were going to tell her.”

  “Well, no, I figured . . . Momma, excuse us for just a second.” Freddy and I went off to the side to discuss our business. He whispered, “I figured you’d want to tell her.”

  “Hey, Freddy, she’s your mother. She might not appreciate hearing bad news from a stranger. She needs to hear this from her own son.”

  Freddy rocked up and down on his toes, deep in thought. “You reckon? The thing is, I’d hate to mess it up, you know, say the wrong thing.”

  “You’ll do fine. Just tell her the truth. When you stick with the truth, what can go wrong?”

  He thought about that. “Well, quite a lot, I ’spect, but if you’re sure . . .”

  “I’m sure, Freddy. This is a time for a son to share the truth with his mother.”

  “Ooooo-kay. Let’s do it.”

  We walked back to her. I could a
lmost feel the tension in the air, the kind of tension that comes before a moment of Healing Truth.

  Freddy took a deep breath and said, “Momma, Hank wanted me to tell you that you look like an old dinosaur.”

  Huh?

  I stared at Freddy, unable to believe that he’d said what he’d said. I mean, he had more or less spoken the truth, but for crying out loud . . .

  Boys, you talk about a DEAD SILENCE. We had one. You could have heard a pin feather drop.

  Momma’s eyes widened and she asked, “What did you say?”

  I held a paw to my lips, hoping that Freddy would get the message to hush. He didn’t hush. He raised his voice and said, “This dog says you look like an old dinosaur!”

  I caught Freddy by the wing and led him off to the side. “What are you trying to do, get me murdered?”

  “Well, I just told her what you said.”

  “That’s not what I said. I said she IS a dinosaur, not that she looks like one. A lady might be a dinosaur, but no lady wants to look like one.”

  He heaved a sigh. “That’s why I wanted you to do the talking. I’ve never had a way with words.”

  “Yes, well, foolish me. I should have listened. Okay, I’d better handle it from here.”

  “Oh, good, ’cause I’ve got a feeling Momma’s fixing to be on the peck.”

  Peck? I glanced at her long beak. It was sharp on the end. Clearly, I would have to choose my words with care.

  We turned back to Momma and I faced her with a big, warm . . . yipes. She had folded her wings across her chest, and her head seemed to have sunk into her shoulders. And there was a storm in her eyes.

  I addressed her in a soothing tone of voice. “Uh, ma’am, we’ve had a little misunderstanding here. See, I was misquoted, and maybe you’d like to, uh, hear a clarification of my remarks. What do you say?” She said nothing, just stabbed me with a cold gaze. “Anyway, what I told Freddy was an obvious fact: you’re a Terradogtail Dinosaur Bird. I wasn’t making any judgments. I just think you’re entitled to know about your, uh, cultural heritage . . . don’t you see.”