Robert Bakker - RAPTOR RED

Good chick, Raptor Red thinks.

The speed of the tail strikes is amazing. Raptor Red sees the chick leap gracefully straight into the air to avoid a well-aimed blow. The whip-tail seems momentarily confused.

Very good chick. Raptor Red stretches her injured leg and feels the joint pop back in place.

THUMP! Raptor Red sits up when she hears that .sound. The tail has hit flesh, hard.

She can see the chick, safe, running up the slope. Who was hit? she asks herself.

There - She sees her sister’s head and left hand poking up from the snow. The whip-tail is advancing deliberately.

Get up - GET UP! Raptor Red thinks. She screams a high-pitched alarm.

Her sister gets back on her feet, but she’s very wobbly.

Whump. She’s bowled over and bounces against a large rock.

There’s a silent pause. The whip-tail takes a few steps. Its tail muscles tense.

WHUMP - WHUMP - WHUMP. Three heavy blows fall on the spot where Raptor Red’s sister lies. All three sound like close-range hits onto bone and muscle.

Raptor Red’s pupils dilate with anger. She looks over to the chick, and her expression communicates the message, We must work together.

The chick bobs its head once and makes exaggerated steps toward the whip-tail. The big herbivore turns his attention from Raptor Red’s sister and toward the chick and lashes out with his tail. But the chick has judged the distance just right - she’s a few yards beyond tail range.

Very, very good chick, Raptor Red thinks approvingly. She limps forward, behind the whip-tail. Her knee limits her mobility, but she still can turn and kick to the right. The whip-tail sees Raptor Red and turns away from the older chick.

We’re playing the keep-away game, Raptor Red thinks. It’s the game she and her sister played around their own mother, years ago. Raptor Red would tease the adult from the front, while her sister would tease from behind - always keeping out of reach of the adult feet and claws.

This time the game is in deadly earnest. Each time the older chick teases the whip-tail, she leads the big plant-eater up the slope, away from her injured mother. Each time Raptor Red teases from behind, she induces the whip-tail to make a half-turn, still increasing the distance from where her sister lies.

Very, very smart chick, Raptor Red thinks as she watches her niece make another deft mock-attack just out of tail range.

Raptor Red and the older chick lead the befuddled whip-tail to the top of the slope. Now the snow begins to fall so heavily that it’s hard to see more than a few yards ahead. Is it gone? - Is it gone? Raptor Red asks herself silently.

Raptor Red squints to make out a dark shape - a clump of conifer seedlings. To the left is another dark mass of vegetation. Raptor Red sees the older chick run past her and snarl at the trees.

One of the trees moves. The chick backs away, and Raptor Red sniffs loudly and finally gets a clear scent - it’s the whip-tail.

Visibility drops to zero. Raptor Red can hear the quiet crunch-crunch of the enormous, cushionlike paws coming toward her. The whip-tail halts six yards away. The wind is blowing in gusts so hard that he can’t see or smell Raptor Red.

Without a sound the whip-tail charges, rearing up and coming down hard on his forepaws.

Raptor Red rolls over to her right to avoid being crushed. The protruding thumb-claw of the whip-tail’s paw hits a shrub next to her and breaks it into jagged splinters.

Raptor Red isn’t hurt by the strike of the fore-paw, but she loses her balance on the snow-slickened ground. She tries to grab a clump of ferns, but her sharp foreclaws cut right through the branches without securing a firm grip. She slides backward, all the way down the slope onto the open meadow.

Her leg throbs, but otherwise she feels very good. Whip-tail has finally given up and fled. She can hear him breaking tree limbs in frustration as he moves away.

The older chick bounds down the slope and slides into her.

Raptor Red gives the chick an adult-style head-bump and nuzzles the back of her neck. The chick nuzzles back as if to say, See! I can fight like an adult! I’m ready to take my place in the pack!

The two raptors play-wrestle for a few seconds.

Raptor Red disengages and raises her head to check on her sister.

A head pops up where her sister has fallen. It’s a raptor head. For a moment Raptor Red is happy -her sister is alive.

But the head bobs up and down and whimpers. It’s the younger chick. Raptor Red makes a low, gurgling sound - the greeting call of sibling Utahraptors. There’s a weak reply. Raptor Red limps over toward the sound.

Her sister lies next to the little chick, and she tries to raise her head when Raptor Red sits down. Raptor Red reaches her muzzle down and nudges her sister’s body all over. There’s no blood, except for a drop at the corner of her mouth. Raptor Red stares at her sister’s chest. When the rib cage rises and falls with each breath, there’s an awkward unevenness in the series of rib bones.

The wind picks up. The little chick tries to get underneath Raptor Red, to escape the cold, clambering over her injured left leg.

Raptor Red howls in pain. The chick jumps and huddles against her older sister. The older chick stands still, in emotional shock. She’s always assumed that her mother would be there to protect the chicks. Life without her was - is - unthinkable.

Raptor Red’s sister raises her torso with her hands and makes low, reassuring noises.

Raptor Red feels relieved. It’s going to turn out all right, her brain tells herself. She tries to ignore the limp way her sister’s hindlegs lie in the snow.

The night is chilled with more spring snow. Raptor Red spends the night awake, lying curled around one side of her sister, the older chick on the other. There is a weak sound of breathing.

In the morning Raptor Red sniffs the air - it’s full of dangerous scents. There are two or three species of strange herbivores moving in large groups on the plateau above and in the valley beyond the trees. There is a strong smell of deinonychs.

Raptor Red decides she must get the pack back to the safety of the cave, and she gently takes hold of her sister with forepaws and muzzle. She moves ten steps up the hill, half dragging, half carrying her sister’s body. But then Raptor Red feels her own left leg collapse and she slumps down again. She sighs and sits down. She starts to whimper, but the noise upsets the chicks, so she becomes quiet again.

Her sister opens her eyes - she has a wild, unfocused look. Her body quivers, and there’s a spasm of movement in tail and neck. Raptor Red now sees that one broken rib has pushed its jagged end through her sister’s skin. The older chick tries to lift her mother’s head up, then drops it and stares at Raptor Red.

Raptor Red still has hope. She knows a raptor body can take a terrible beating and still recover - if the pack feeds the invalid and protects him or her from extreme cold or heat. Raptor Red has seen it before. Back when she was a chick in Asia, an uncle came back to the nest horribly cut up by a rival raptor pack - and he was back on his feet in a week.

Maybe we can make a nest here - maybe the pack can protect my sister here is her thought. She drags her sister under a tree where a pile of fallen branches provides ready-made bedding.

Her sister opens her eyes again and looks at Raptor Red. Raptor Red is puzzled - her sister’s gaze is calm and steady and doesn’t have that frantic energy Raptor Red is used to seeing. The older chick nuzzles her mother’s snout.'

Raptor Red feels very maternal. She senses an expansion of her family responsibility. She touches both chicks on the snout-tip. The younger chick snuggles closer. The older chick backs away. At least for the immediate future, Raptor Red knows that two chicks are hers to feed and protect whether they like it or not.