Dinosaur Trouble

by Dick King-Smith

  One midmorning, Nosy left the woods and flew off to take over from his mother. He saw no sign of her in the skies, but then caught sight of her as she skimmed low over the partly eaten body of a stegosaurus. Clouds of insects were busy about it, and she was busy about them. She flew up when she saw Nosy approaching.

  “Well,” she said, “what d’you think killed that, my son?”

  “T. rex?”

  “Exactly. He’s back. I haven’t seen any sight of him yet; he’s probably busy digesting this breakfast of his. But you keep your eyes peeled. Daddy will be along later.”

  After his mother had gone, Nosy flew up high to scan the plain below. A number of herds of different dinosaurs were grazing below him, but then suddenly, they all began to move about nervously, and then, in a kind of mass panic, to hurry away, to the left or the right, as though some fearful enemy was coming.

  T. rex? thought Nosy.

  He flew lower over the hustling herds, and sure enough, there, marching forward toward the lake on his two great hind legs, his tiny forelegs held against his massive chest, his jaws agape to show those long, daggerlike teeth, was Hack the Ripper. He was growling, and soon his growls turned to roars.

  There’s nothing I can do to save any of these wretched beasts below me, thought Nosy, but I must alert Banty and her ma and pa so that they can get into the water, and he set off toward the lake. Halfway there he saw a solitary figure, its head buried in the grass of the plain, quietly eating. It was an apatosaurus. It was a young apatosaurus. It was Banty!

  Quickly he flew toward her and hovered above her.

  “T. rex! T. rex! Run, Banty!” he squealed.

  Banty did not even look up.

  “Not now, Nosy,” she said. “Not while I’m having my lunch. Anyway, I’m a bit bored with playing Cry T. Rex! We’ll have to think of another game to play.”

  “But this isn’t a game, Banty, this is real!” squeaked Nosy. “Can’t you hear him? Look, you can see him now, and he’s coming straight for you!”

  At this Banty raised her head, stretched her neck, and saw Hack.

  He was no more than ten apatosaurus-lengths away, and the lake was about the same distance from Banty. She would never reach it in time; he was so much faster on his two legs than she was on her four. At the sight of her, Hack roared even louder.

  If only Mom were here, thought Nosy, she could fly at him and scratch his snout like she did before. There’s only one thing for it—I’ll have to try to do the same.

  But at that moment, he saw his father come flying from the woods, across the lake, and over the fleeing apatosaurus.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” he squealed. “It’s T. rex! He’s going to kill Banty! Can you do something? Please!”

  Clawed may have been slow-witted, but now he showed how quick he could be in action.

  “Out of the way, boy!” he cried, and he dived upon the fast-approaching Hack the Ripper.

  Then, spreading his great wings wide, he hovered directly in front of the tyrannosaurus so as to obscure the creature’s view of the way ahead.

  Snap and snarl as he might, Hack could not shift Clawed out of his path. So he didn’t see Banty reach the lake, splosh into it, and submerge.

  As Clawed wheeled away, Hack dashed on down to the water’s edge, but there was nothing to be seen except, some way out, a small pair of nostrils. These, of course, Hack the Ripper did not notice, as he stood knee-deep, cursing the pterodactyl that had blocked his view of the prey.

  “Gosh, Daddy!” said Nosy as they circled above. “You were amazing!”

  12

  Hack the Ripper was furious. Roaring and snarling, he strode back to the body of the stegosaurus, hacking at it to stuff himself full of meat. All the dinosaurs on that part of the Great Plain moved as hastily as they could out of sight of the angry tyrannosaurus. Once again, had they known it, they were in fact quite safe for a while. He would not hunt till he was hungry again.

  Gargantua and Titanic had been out in the lake, gathering their daily ration of waterweed, and had seen the drama of Banty’s escape.

  “Again!” cried Gargantua. “Again our friends the pterodactyls have saved our Banty!”

  “Old Clawed,” said Titanic, “was pretty good, wasn’t he, Gargy?”

  Later that afternoon, Nosy and his parents were hanging from a favorite branch when they heard a lot of noise in the distance. It sounded like branches breaking, which it was.

  Banty could have walked among the trees without damaging them, but Titanic and Gargantua, who were much of a size—enormous—could not.

  As they neared the pterodactyls’ roost, Titanic attempted to make his way between two very large trees that were growing close together, too close for an apatosaurus to pass. He became stuck.

  “I’m stuck, Gargy!” he called. “What shall I do?”

  “Use your brains,” Gargantua called back.

  Titanic thought about this advice for a while, with no result. Then, growing annoyed, he began to lean sideways, first against one tree, then against the other, until, with a tremendous crash, first one and then the other tree fell, torn up by the roots.

  Titanic walked on till he caught up with his wife and his daughter, and all three dinosaurs stood below the high branch from which the three pterosaurs were hanging.

  “Aviatrix, dear,” Gargantua called up, “we have come, Titanic and I, to thank your husband for his heroic efforts in once again saving our child. What do you say, Banty?”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Banty.

  “And please, sir, accept my grateful thanks,” said Titanic.

  Daughter and father both calling me “sir,” thought Clawed. I wish the mother would too, but you can’t have everything.

  “My dear Gargantua,” said Aviatrix, “once again we are only too glad to have been of service. Had I been on duty at the time, I should no doubt have flummoxed the dastardly curmudgeon.”

  Gargantua looked pleased.

  Titanic and Clawed looked puzzled.

  Banty and Nosy looked at one another with amusement.

  “Well,” said Gargantua, “we must be getting back to the lake. Why don’t you all come and have a drink with us? To celebrate.”

  “Shall we, Clawed?” said Aviatrix.

  “Good idea, Avy,” said Clawed.

  As the pterodactyls, flying very slowly above their friends, followed the path by which the apatosauruses had reached them, they noticed the two great trees that had been felled.

  Titanic stopped and stretched up his long neck to address Clawed hovering above.

  “I must apologize, sir,” he said. “I got a bit stuck between those trees, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t worry, old lad,” replied Clawed.

  “Plenty more trees about.”

  When they had all reached the lake and Aviatrix had flown up on a quick reconnaissance patrol to make sure the coast was clear, she and Clawed went off to the dead stegosaurus for a feast of flies. Nosy and Banty went off to play.

  “Cry T. Rex!?” suggested Nosy.

  “No, thanks,” said Banty. “I never want to play that game again.”

  “Gosh!” Nosy said. “Your pa is so strong!”

  “Ma, too,” said Banty.

  “You will be, one day.”

  “Suppose so.”

  Nosy let himself down gently onto his friend’s neck. They had invented this position, which gave him a rest from flying and still allowed her, if she wished, to graze. One leg on either side of her neck meant that there was no danger of his claws scratching her.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “Oh yes?”

  “Sooner or later, we’ve got to do something about T. rex.”

  “What can we possibly do? Your mom and daddy couldn’t do anything, nor could Ma and Pa.”

  “True,” said Nosy. “But you and I might, between us. There must be a way to rid us of T. rex.”

  “How?”

  “Give him a fright,” said
Nosy. “He’s always roaring about, attacking baby dinosaurs. I bet he’s really a coward. And if we attack him, he’ll get the fright of his life and run away. We’ll scare him off.”

  13

  “You must be joking,” said Banty.

  “No,” said Nosy, “I’m not. Think what we saw, just now, when we were walking or flying back through the woods.”

  “What?”

  “Those two great trees your pa pushed down.”

  “Well?”

  “Suppose,” said Nosy, “that T. rex had been under one of those trees when it fell. That would have given him a tremendous fright—and a real bump on the head. Serve him right.”

  “Wow!” said Banty. “But how do we get him in the right place at the right time?”

  “Decoy him.”

  “Decoy him?”

  “Yes,” said Nosy. “Select a tree, a really big one, for your pa to push over just as T. rex goes past. He could even loosen it a bit before, to make sure it would fall. It would be a kind of trap, you see, and all we have to do is to lure the beast into it.”

  “And how do we do that?” asked Banty.

  “Like I say, by using a decoy, so that he’s chasing it and, as he goes by the tree, your pa gives it a good push and down it comes—straight onto T. rex.”

  “I see,” said Banty. “This decoy isn’t one of you, is it? He knows you could just fly away.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And it isn’t going to be Pa, who’ll be waiting behind the tree. Ma too, probably.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So,” said Banty, “I am to be the decoy, am I, Nosy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just suppose I can’t go fast enough. Just suppose he catches me.”

  “He won’t. Mom and Daddy and I will fly in his face so he can’t see where he’s going. You’ll be all right, Banty.”

  “Thanks,” said Banty. “Glad to know that.”

  When they got back, they found their parents chatting, the pterodactyls hanging from a branch of a large lakeside tree, the apatosauruses standing below, long necks up-stretched.

  Nosy hung, Banty stood.

  “Nosy has a plan,” she said to them all.

  “A plan?” said Aviatrix. “What about?”

  “T. rex.”

  “What are you going to do to him?” asked Gargantua.

  “Frighten him,” said Nosy. “Scare him away.”

  “Don’t be silly, Nosy,” said his mother. “Run away and play. Scare T. rex, indeed!”

  “Hang on a minute, Avy,” said Clawed.

  “I am hanging on!”

  “Yes, but let’s hear what the boy’s got to say. I could do with a good laugh.”

  So Nosy outlined his scheme, as he had to Banty.

  “She’ll have to be the decoy, of course,” he finished up.

  “It’s so simple, isn’t it?” said Aviatrix sarcastically to the three adults. “Titanic just drops a tree on the brute. A tree, which is in the woods, which are on the other side of the lake, which means that T. rex will be chasing Banty for a long way, which means he’ll catch her. I never heard of anything more injudicious.”

  “What’s that mean, Mom?” asked Nosy.

  “Unwise.”

  “I quite agree, Aviatrix,” said Gargantua. “How perspicacious you are!”

  Aviatrix looked very pleased. I only taught her that word quite recently, she thought. There’s hope for her yet.

  Titanic, standing looking up at the three pterodactyls on their branch, looked farther up still.

  “I quite agree with your good lady, sir,” he said to Clawed. “To go all the way to your wood might not be wise. But this tree here is a very large one, which I make bold to say I could, I think, push over, especially with the assistance of my good lady. As close to the lake as we are, it seems to me that Banty could easily escape into the water.”

  “No!” cried Gargantua. “Forget about T. rex. We must not put our daughter’s life at risk.”

  “If we forget about T. rex, Gargy,” said Titanic, “our daughter may pay for it with her life.”

  There was silence for a while as they all thought about Nosy’s plan, a silence broken only by a small snore as Clawed, tired by all the talk, dozed off.

  “Well, Mom,” said Nosy at last, “what do you think?”

  Aviatrix looked at her son. She suddenly felt very proud of him. Fancy him thinking up such a scheme all by himself. And this was the right spot, no doubt of it; this was where T. rex came to drink in the shade of this great tree. But wouldn’t he see Titanic and Gargantua waiting behind the tree? No, because she and Clawed would pester him all the time. She would use her aerobatic skills to scratch his beastly snout, and Clawed would spread his great wings before him, to confuse him, and Nosy—could Nosy do anything when T. rex came?

  “I think it is a fine plan, my son. But tell me, what will you do?” she asked.

  Nosy had a sudden brainwave.

  “I,” he said, “will be the first decoy. When T. rex comes down for a drink, I’m going to flutter about on the ground in front of him, as though I were sick or had been hurt, and I’ll keep doing that until he catches sight of Banty. I may not be much of a mouthful, but he won’t be able to resist chasing me. Then Banty gets into the lake and her pa and ma fell the tree and I’ll get out of the way and it will be ‘Bye-bye, T. rex.’ You’ll see. You’ll all see.”

  14

  The best-laid schemes often go wrong, sometimes badly wrong, and it is rare for a plan to succeed completely, turning out in every detail exactly as the planner had hoped.

  But this is what happened for Nosy.

  By now each member of the two families knew exactly what to do when the time came. They even rehearsed it, pretending that a triceratops, who happened to come down for a drink, was Hack, and taking up their positions accordingly.

  Titanic leaned on the tree quite a bit, so that it was now not as strongly rooted as it had been.

  Aviatrix went out on regular long-distance patrols so as to have early warning of the approach of the tyrannosaurus.

  One morning, she flew back to the lake at top speed, crying, “Action stations!” and by the time Hack the Ripper came striding down for a drink, everyone was ready.

  Clawed and Nosy took off to join Aviatrix.

  Banty stood by the water’s edge, looking inviting.

  Titanic stood quite still behind the great tree, with Gargantua standing behind him.

  Now Nosy flew down and flopped about upon the ground in front of the T. rex, who had by this time caught sight of Banty and was making for her.

  But he took his eye off her, thinking that he would first kill and eat this annoying flapping, flopping, and seemingly flightless thing in his path.

  Then Aviatrix flew in at full speed and scratched his snout, and he was blinded by rage, and by Clawed, who had spread his wide wings to spoil his view—of Banty, of Aviatrix, of Titanic, and of Gargantua.

  The harassed tyrannosaurus was totally bemused. He roared in rage.

  “Now!” screamed Nosy at the top of his voice, and then everything happened at once, just as it was meant to.

  Banty plunged into the lake, the three pterodactyls winged their way out of danger, Titanic pushed his great weight against the trunk of the tree, and Gargantua pushed her great weight against him.

  With an almighty crash, the tree fell, right on top of Hack.

  Then all was still, save for one small movement, the movement of something that stuck out from beneath the wreckage.

  It was the tip of the tail of Hack the Ripper.

  It twitched once, twice, a third time, and then it was still, forever.

  Between them, the apatosauruses rolled the tree trunk off the body of the T. rex for all to see, as Banty came dripping out of the lake.

  “We’ve given him more than a fright,” said Nosy. “He won’t hurt us anymore. He’s as dead as he can be.”

  “Well done, T
itanic, old chap!” cried Clawed.

  “I thank you too, sir,” Titanic replied.

  And, “Well done, Gargantua!” cried Aviatrix. “Such potency!”

  “There’s one person,” said Banty, “who deserves all our thanks. If it hadn’t been for him, none of this would have happened.”

  “Who’s that, then?” asked Clawed.

  “Your son, sir,” said Banty. “My friend. Our hero. Nosy!”

  Everyone looked at him and thought what a jolly fine young pterodactyl he was.

  Then Titanic and Gargantua lumbered off onto the Great Plain, and Clawed and Aviatrix flew back to the woods.

  “You must be tired, Nosy,” said Banty. “Take a break.”

  Gently, Nosy let himself down to sit astride his friend’s neck, and together they gazed reflectively at the great broken body of Hack the Ripper.

  “We need never be afraid of him again,” said Banty.

  “Or,” said Nosy, “as my mom would have put it, there is no longer any necessity to regard him with trepidation.”

  “But,” said Banty, “he can’t be the only T. rex in the world. Another might come one day.”

  “Not to worry, Banty,” said Nosy. “If it does, I’ll fix it. But you never know, this brute here may be the last of them. Neither Mom nor Daddy nor your ma and pa have ever set eyes on another one. T. rex may now be extinct.”

  “What does ‘extinct’ mean, Nosy?” asked Banty.

  Remembering exactly what his mother had told him when he was a tiny baby, Nosy replied, “It means gone, finished, kaput, dead and done for.”

  “Wow!” said Banty. “I like it!”