Robert Bakker - RAPTOR RED

Raptor Red doesn’t think this through. She doesn’t have to. She was born with the same mate-search image that males of her species have. Her genes encode high standards, and in her first breeding season she sought a tall male filled out with muscle. All the young unattached females looked for the strongest males with the plumpest thighs.

Raptor Red’s mother was a well-muscled raptor too, and this image reinforced the inborn standard of Utahraptor beauty.

Plump thighs are an outward sign of good hunters and good genes. Since father and mother Utahraptors share the burden of nest-making and chick-feeding nearly equally, young males and females scrutinize every potential mate. Skepticism rules courtship. Toward each potential mate, the undercurrent of thought in Raptor Red’s mind was I’ll risk myself in reproduction with you only if you can convince me that you’re healthy, smart, and trustworthy. Raptor Red didn’t give even a second look to scrawny males during that first courtship season. But when a thickly muscled male bounced over to her and initiated a most vigorous mating dance, her courtship incredulity was overcome.

Now she’s lost her mate, and she’s skinny. Too skinny, she suspects, to be attractive.

She nuzzles the base of her tail. It’s also too thin. Males and females check out each other’s tails carefully during courtship - the tail base is supposed to be plump and well filled out, with fat layers over the muscle. When a raptor isn’t eating well, the tail fat is the first layer to disappear.

Raptor Red stares hard at a crimson spot she sees near the tip of her tail. This spot is even more worrisome. Persistent wounds, even little ones, automatically disqualify a raptor from the ranks of the most desirable. She scrapes at the mark with her foreclaws, then licks it. It’s not a scab - just a bit of dried lungfish meat that got stuck to her skin at her last meal.

Raptor Red carries out her sign-marking chores in the final minutes of daylight. She finds a suitable tree, tall, straight, with a thick trunk. She reaches high and scratches long claw marks on the bark, releasing sweet-smelling sap. Then she rubs her throat on the tree, leaving her telltale signature from glands on the underside of her jaws.

She pauses and adds the strongest signal of her gender and species…ung pile. No raptor of the wrong species will miss the message now: I’m an adult Utahraptor of the Red Snout species. If you’re a healthy Red Snout male, consider ME. All others, LEAVE ME ALONE!

That’s all she can do now. The evening breeze will carry the scent-marks to any red-snouted Utahraptor within a five-mile radius. She has advertised her-self. Now she must wait.

The sunset is glorious, illuminating Raptor Red’s temporary nest with crimson and turning the dried bracken into incandescent lace. She’s feeling better. Beautiful colors always lift her spirits. She begins to I drift off to sleep.

Bing. A little alarm bell goes off in her head, triggered by her olfactory sense. A stream of molecules has entered her nostrils and hit special sensors inside her muzzle.

Bing - wake up - bing - male alert - male alert.

Raptor Red jumps to her feet, every muscle tensed. She sniffs deeply at the evening air. Yes, that’s male scent, and it’s her species. She raises her body and weaves her head back and forth, staring upwind. There is somebody out there.

Snff… snff… SNFFFF! Utahraptor male. SNFFFF! Red Snout. My kind.

A tall figure walks out of the shadows, walking with exaggerated strides. His head dips down and up in a deep bow. Raptor Red dips her head just a bit. She’s hopeful - but suspicious. Raptor courtships are supposed to begin in the morning and go on all day, to give both sides ample opportunity to evaluate every move, every body part, every scent. She’s lonely and unhappy with her lot as a single hunter. But she’s not desperate.

Snff! Good. He’s Red Snout, but not close kin. Her scent-evaluation centers automatically go through their checklist. Raptor Red’s instincts won’t let her accept courtship from family.

The male moves closer, bowing every few steps. Raptor Red moves out away from the bracken and into a little clearing where she can see better. The tall male comes to the edge of the open space but then stops. His graceful bows become awkward.

Raptor Red’s heart sinks. She begins to think that the tall male is hiding something. If he followed the rules, he’d come up close.

She stamps her left foot: GrrrrrKK!

He stops, bows, and takes a half step. Raptor Red sees his body contours highlighted by the warm afterglow of the sun. He is very tall - and muscular too. She’s beginning to hope that he’s just shy.

They circle each other. Raptor Red becomes defensive - she thinks he’s staring at her thin tail. And he is. He backs away, forcing her to follow and take the initiative in the dance.

Don’t go away - don’t go away - don’t go away, Raptor Red thinks as she tries her hardest to appear graceful and strong and healthy.

The male turns broadside to her, a gesture that conveys indecision.

Raptor Red begins to feel uneasy about some of the male’s moves. He’s rushing the courtship preliminaries, violating Utahraptor etiquette. Now he walks beside her and tries to place his flank against hers. It’s a clumsy attempt to apply the leaning gesture, where one raptor applies gentle pressure through its torso and the other raptor is supposed to respond with a slight push in the opposite , direction.

It’s an intimate form of physical contact, usually reserved for raptor pairs who know and trust each other. Raptor Red used to spend hours leaning against her sister when they were youngsters, and she and her mate enjoyed the lean in the early evening, after they had hunted and fed together.

She has missed this type of contact terribly over the last few days. But she feels her skin flinch when it touches his. She doesn’t like the way he presses his hide against her shoulder. It is a dishonest touch. Raptor Red stands still and makes a huge, sweeping bow - and at the bottom of her courtship curtsey, she sees the marks on the male’s throat. SPOTS/ her brain screams. HE’S GOT SPOTS/ Raptor Red thrusts her snout under the tall male’s chin. He pulls his head away, but not before Raptor Red gets a good look.

Ticks - the red spots are ticks. Raptor Red knows well the telltale sign of parasite infestation. She was born with a horror of little red spots. She has seen raptor chicks and raptor adults slowly succumb to tick disease, losing vigor every day.

She grabs the male’s neck and looks very carefully. Small black dots are moving around inside the red marks.

He’s got bugs!

Raptor Red jumps backward three steps, raises her head, and screams a mixture of threat and alarm. The male looks perplexed.

She lunges at him with all six foreclaws slashing circles through the air.

He gets the message. He slinks off into the darkness. In a few minutes his fading scent assures her that he’s in full retreat.

If Raptor Red’s thoughts could be put into language, they’d be, Males are such liars. I’m a bit underweight - but I don’t cover up my parasites. That bug-bitten loser is lucky I didn’t slice him into little pieces.

She goes back to her nest, fluffs up the bed of dry ferns, plops herself down, and nibbles furiously at an iguanodon leg she stored there. Then she goes to sleep.

Raptor Red wakes up slowly, as is her custom. Before her conscious brain is alert, her senses have been scanning the air for sounds and smells. There are faint, distant scents from deinonychs and from some yellow-nosed raptors. And there is something else too, a scent that makes her eyes pop open. It’s close and it’s very familiar. It’s almost like her mother’s scent. Almost but not quite. But it’s definitely Raptor Red-Kind scent.