Robert Bakker - RAPTOR RED

The acro snaps her neck backward into a tight S-curve. Muscle groups work against each other -tensing the head and neck and torso. The whole joint-muscle apparatus is a coiled weapon, ready to fire and send the jaws down and forward.

KAWOOOOOOSH! Raptor Red is knocked backward. Her head goes six feet under. Her muzzle drags along the bottom. Wet sand is stuffed up her nostrils.

KAWOOOOOOOSH! A second explosive force sends tons of water over her, rolling her body along the bottom.

Salt water clogs her throat.

Five more surges keep her from grabbing the bottom with her hindclaws.

Raptor Red jabs all six of her foreclaws into a clump of brown seaweed. Then she jams one set of hindclaws in between two submerged rocks. She sticks her head and neck up as far as they’ll go.

Her nostrils break the surface. She spits out green water and a mouthful of salty mud. Her right eye opens just above the surface.

Drops of hot blood spatter the water all around her. She looks around. It’s a hideous sight.

Streams of bright red arterial blood are squirting up from the surface. The acro has a huge open wound in the thorax that exposes three broken ribs and lacerated viscera. A hindleg, dislocated at the knee, flaps about in uncoordinated spasms.

A three-yard-long kronosaur snout swings viciously to the side, seizing the acrocanthosaur leg and spinning the acro body beneath the waves.

Raptor Red struggles to the shore and looks back. The acrocanthosaur surfaces again, her left thigh and shin flexing convulsively. The kronosaur shifts his jaws up his victim’s body, clamping his giant tooth-row across the acro’s neck. The krone’s flippers on the right side tilt upward as he dives to his left, dragging the acro down again.

Back on shore the raptor chick who had been in the water rushes up to the sand dune. Both raptor chicks huddle next to their mother.

The male acro on the beach has sat down. He’s staring at the water’s surface where his mate disappeared. He sees the acro resurface a hundred yards farther out. This time her body is nearly limp. There’s just a faint hint of movement in the corner of the mouth.

Raptor Red walks out of the surf. She’s very happy. And she’s proud of herself too. This is the best victory she’s scored in her life as a predator. It’s better than bringing down an iguanodon. It’s better than a group assault on a twenty-ton astro.

This time she beat an acrocanthosaur with her brain, not her claws.

She trots up the sand dune diagonally.

The male acro has already retreated to the dune crest. He catches one last glimpse of his mate, two hundred yards out, her body is being spun around by the thirty-ton kronosaur.

The acro male is unhurt, but his spirit is gone. He trudges away in retreat.

Raptor Red follows cautiously. She watches the acro grow smaller and smaller until he vanishes beyond the next line of dunes. She looks down. Her sister is calling to her. Raptor Red joins the two chicks in an orgy of snout rubs and reciprocal grooming. Everyone seems in splendid shape.

Raptor Red jerks her head up and sniffs. Her good mood disappears. She trots back up to the dune crest and surveys the landscape.

There! she says to herself. There he is.

She can see her male consort two hundred yards away to the north. She’s confused. Is he afraid? Does he know we won? She calls to him. He doesn’t respond. She calls again. He’s moving.

He’s trotting away from her.

Raptor Red stretches her muzzle high and makes a single piercing call.

The male freezes. He turns his head. Maybe he’s making a return call, but Raptor Red can’t hear it.

Maybe that’s not him, she thinks. She sniffs and stares and sniffs again. No doubt about it, that’s her male’s distinctive smell.

The male is standing still, looking back at her. This has happened before - he’ll come back, Raptor Red thinks.

She detects something else in the air - the scent of female Utahraptors, the group of strangers camping nearby.

Far to the north she can see them, tiny figures making slow body movements.

Raptor Red does not know what to do next.

She stands quietly and watches the young male turn and walk quickly north.

Raptor Red stays there, high on the dune crest, for five hours. His scent gets fainter and fainter. He’s not coming back.

Raptor Red pauses to catch her breath. The mountain air takes getting used to. She knows that they are traveling north. North is the direction she and her original mate came from three and a half long years ago. Now she and her sister and the two chicks are going north involuntarily. It’s the only direction that seems free of acrocanthosaur hordes.

A week after Raptor Red lured the female acro to her death in the surf, three more family groups of acros showed up on the beach. It was too much for Raptor Red and her sister to deal with. Winds from the north were free of acro scent, so the raptor pack went north.

And up. The Utahraptor family’s flight leads them to higher and higher elevations, far higher than Raptor Red has ever been.

After a long day of zigzagging up a mountain valley, Raptor Red’s sister nuzzles her. It surprises Raptor Red. Her sister is not the huggy type.

Her sister’s mind is usually a muddle of conflicting rages that she can barely control. She fears and hates the smell of other raptors. She’s driven to apoplectic anger when she senses acrocanthosaurs nearby. And she flails her arms in frustration when the physical elements go against her - when it’s too windy or too rainy or too hot.

One central purpose holds her thoughts together: protect her chicks, protect her family, protect her sister.

Now penetrating through her paranoid and frequently frantic intellectual fog is the realization that Raptor Red is sad. And Raptor Red’s sister has finally figured out that this sadness began when the young male left.

To Raptor Red’s sister, the young male was a dangerous annoyance. She hated him from day one. She wanted to get rid of him. She never could figure out why Raptor Red protected him.

She still doesn’t understand. But she wants to make Raptor Red feel better, so she nuzzles and gurgles awkwardly. She’s trying hard, but her instinctive skills of comforting a sibling are poorly developed.

Raptor Red turns away. She still blames her sister for depriving her of her young mate.

Her sister follows, making exaggerated submissive movements with head very low. She’s not very good at it. She’s had little practice in submission rituals.

Her clumsiness eventually causes her to run her snout directly into a fallen log. She trips, tries to regain her balance by digging her left forepaw into the ground, tumbles over herself, and lands on her back with a sour look on her face.

If evolution had given Raptor Red a full set of lip muscles, she’d smile.

She moves over to her sister and gracefully caresses her neck and shoulders.

Raptor Red lets her sister make all the decisions now. She’s the pack leader. And the pack continues to go up, climbing the seaward side of a mountain range clothed in heavy forests of tree ferns and tall conifer trees. The air becomes clearer, fresher, and much colder, especially at night.

Raptor Red pauses to stick her snout high in the breeze. Yes indeed, there are no acrocanthosaurs here. She sniffs again and sighs. There are no Utahraptor males either.

The pack feasts on a dead iguanodon they find covered by fallen leaves. Raptor Red winces when she cuts the meat with her teeth. The iguanodon’s flesh feels hard and cold against her gums. She tastes ice crystals in the connective tissue.

Raptor Red’s sister looks up at the sky. Her keen eyes follow something small and light falling in irregular spirals. Maybe a bug.