Robert Bakker - RAPTOR RED

Raptor Red worries about her sibling. She hasn’t seen her injured before, and it changes her attitude toward her own responsibility in life. Raptor Red takes on more of the maternal duties - grooming the chicks, making sure that they don’t fight too much over food brought in for them. It’s not that the chicks are especially lovable now - just the reverse. At this stage in her development, the older chick is just adult enough to be obnoxious and irritating. She can run around as fast as Raptor Red, but her mind is still a chick’s half the time. She has no sense of how serious life is, how dangerous it can be.

The older chick constantly teases the younger chick. And both chicks tease the adults, nipping at tails and screeching.

In raptor years the older chick is a teenager, that time when physical energy far exceeds common sense.

The mountain fauna is full of many surprises. The dactyls are different here, smaller and faster on the wing. There are more birds. There are exotic dinosaur species - and some of them are dangerous. The scent-signals are hard for Raptor Red to decipher. There is raptor sign in many places - from deinonychs and Utahraptors - but the identity of the dung-signers is hard to read because the cold nights freeze the dung-marks, erasing much of the information.

Raptor Red and her sister leave their marks on tree trunks: they place a dung-sign at the base, then reach as high as they can and scratch long wounds in the bark with their foreclaws.

Any other raptor can read the message: We’re Utahraptor sisters, and we’re this tall, so keep away!

At the beginning of their second month on the mountain, Raptor Red notices a new and strange behavior being practiced by her sister. It starts with her sister snuffling the soil with intense olfactory energy, then stamping her foot, growling, pawing dirt over a spot on the ground, and running.

Raptor Red has been assuming that it’s a danger sign and has been running off with her sister every time. But the sixth time her sister repeats the performance, Raptor Red gets suspicious. Instead of running away, she goes back to the spot where her sister pawed the earth.

Despite her sister’s growls, Raptor Red sniff-searches the area. There’s a lingering scent, a familiar one. She claws the earth, overturning the sod and releasing more aroma.

It’s male Utahraptor sign - her male consort!

Raptor Red claws the ground furiously and reply-marks the spot with her dung-sign. Then she glares at her sister, who has assumed a nonchalant posture and refuses to make eye contact. She tries to look busy scanning the meadow ahead for imaginary iguanodon herds.

If raptors had complex facial muscles, her sister would be wearing a sheepish expression.

Raptor Red charges and bumps her sister so hard on the rump that both of them tumble head over tail. For the rest of the day, Raptor Red ignores her sister, refusing to return head-bobs or muzzle-rubs.

It’s not the last time Raptor Red finds fresh sign from her young male on the ground and in the bark of trees.

Eeeep … ssssswsh … bmp-bmp-bmpity-bmp.

It’s a sound Raptor Red hasn’t heard before, ever.

Eeeeeeeep … sssssssswsh.

They’re squeals of delight, like a raptor chick playing with its mother’s tail, but even higher-pitched.

Eeeeep— BUMP!

Something alive, something tiny - something is playing over there beyond the pine trees, where the ground slopes away for a hundred yards.

Raptor Red glances at her sister. She has a very curious expression on her face. Not a snarl, or a look of fear, or even an appearance of perplexity. Something else.

Her sister gets up from where the pack has been resting in front of the cave and walks quickly toward the noise. Raptor Red follows.

A iguanodon-herd path snakes through the trees, making a tunnel seven feet tall and three feet wide, where the underbrush has been beaten down by countless generations of herbivore hooves. Ordinarily raptors are cautious when they negotiate this passage - there’s always the danger of meeting a rogue bull iguanodon. But now Raptor Red watches her sister bound through the opening and disappear.

Carefully, pausing at each step, Raptor Red goes through the tunnel. She hates this place. It gives her a weird feeling.

Noises come from the other end of the tunnel -shrill, scary, unnatural calls, vaguely like her sister’s victory whoop but distorted.

Raptor Red is afraid some horrible herbivore is trampling her sibling slowly, causing inconceivable pain. She stands still for a moment, gathering her courage, and plunges out of the passage into the open space beyond.

And there she’s struck dumb by the extraordinary sight.

EEEEEEEP… whoopwhoop-whoooop!

Her sister is sliding down the snowy slope on her back, gurgling and calling like a maniac. She lands at the base of the slope and continues to scoot across the meadow, coming to rest in a mound of crushed saplings. Eeeeeep! Still upside down and lacking any shred of raptor dignity, she calls to Raptor Red.

Eeep. Raptor Red makes a weak reply. What is she doing? She begins to suspect her sibling has caught the mad raptor disease, a malady that makes carnivorous dinosaurs run in circles, growling at themselves, until they fall over.

There’s a flurry of movement at the top of the slope. Raptor Red’s sister isn’t the only predator enjoying the snow slide. A troop of tro-odonts, small raptorlike meat-eaters about forty pounds in weight, are running up to the edge, jumping into the air, and landing on their backsides.

Tro-odonts are slender-snouted bug-eaters and chasers of small furballs. Raptor Red has always ignored them. They pose no danger to raptor chicks, and no competition for game.

Eeeeep … eeeeep … eeeeeep.

It’s the tro-odonts who are emitting the high-pitched calls Raptor Red heard before she came through the trees.

Her sister flips herself over onto her feet and starts climbing the slope, her hand claws slipping every other step. She’s still making manic gurgling noises. When she reaches the top, she makes a bobbing gesture to the tro-odonts.

They look nervous, back away, but then they bob back. Some parts of carnivore body-language are universal. The bob is understood by most species. It means Let’s play!

Raptor Red’s sister looks down the slope, flexes her knees and ankles, makes a half-turn sideways, blinks twice at Raptor Red, and does a partial somersault.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! Down the slope she goes, spinning slowly like a Utahmptor top. She rams into a ridge of mud, bounces once, and slides into an arroyo, where her body disappears into a four-foot-deep snowdrift.

My sister is playing - playing. It takes a while for Raptor Red to comprehend the scene.

Sister - playful. The concepts don’t go together.

Raptor Red thought she knew all her sister’s moods. But here’s a side of her character that was hidden away, a little secret looniness. It’s something her sister must have learned when she was alone, before her chicks were born.

Her sister’s nose pops up from the snowdrift, followed by her hands and feet. She makes her way awkwardly to where Raptor Red is sitting.

Raptor Red feels her chest being rammed by her sister’s forehead. She isn’t sure what the proper response would be. She feels the two chicks huddling behind her thighs. Clearly they don’t understand their mother right now either.

Her sister picks up the younger chick and swings it over the edge of the slope. Down it goes, followed by its mother. A dozen tro-odonts are sliding down twenty feet away. The air is filled with eeeps! spanning four octaves.

It does look like fun, Raptor Red thinks. The younger chick’s fear gives way to childish pleasure. It scrambles to the top again, jumping up and down impishly. Raptor Red’s sister returns and whacks Raptor Red hard on the rump.