Robert Bakker - RAPTOR RED

CRUNNNCH!

The monster’s four-toed paws squash the horsetails flat. Raptor Red backs up even further. She weaves her head back and forth, trying to figure out this armor-plated apparition.

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.