Robert Bakker - RAPTOR RED

My kind… my family. The scent leads Raptor Red to a steep bank in a dried-up riverbed.

Two tiny Utahraptors, only three weeks old, and an older chick stumble out from a burrow. They squeak and sniff at Raptor Red. She sniffs back. Their scent is like an imperfect memory of her own childhood. She cocks her head and stares. Her mother? Her father?

Not father… not mother… but still part of myself - but less than half of me.

No. The chicks aren’t anyone she has met before. But Raptor Red’s olfactory computer gives her a galvanic message: One half of one half….hese chicks are one half of one half of myself… They are my sister’s children!

Raptor Red backs up and sits down. The chicks approach with hesitating steps, sniffing, running back, coming forward, sniffing again. Their noses tell them this is their aunt.

SsssssSSSSSSSS. A loud threat comes from the burrow. A big raptor head comes out, teeth bared. The head abruptly stops hissing.

Raptor Red sniffs loudly. This scent jolts her brain. One half of me… this adult female is one half of me.

I KNOW YOU!

The last time she smelled this scent was three years ago, on a cold day in Canada, the last day she was with her siblings. Before she and her mate began their invasion of the new southern lands.

Raptor Red dances a wild jig of greeting. She hops from one foot to another, going eeep-eeep-eeep like an overgrown chick.

It is her sister.

Early the following morning, a one-ton iguanodon is making contented leaf-munching noises as she feeds on low-growing cycad fronds. She clomps down on the tough palmlike leaves with her sharp beak. The saw-edged beak tip slices easily through the tough plant tissue. Her tongue automatically rolls the bitten-off pieces into a ball that is coated with saliva. With a gentle, efficient rhythm the plant-balls are transferred rearward to the chewing compartment, the oral cavity between the massive rows of molar teeth.

A low grinding sound, like a huge coffee mill, comes from within the iguanodon’s cheeks. Twice a second the mighty molars come together. Twice a second the jagged edges of enamel from a hundred tightly packed teeth slide past each other, trapping plant parts and shredding them. Twice a minute the tongue balls up the ground mass of food and pushes it to the rear of the mouth. Once a minute a lump can be seen in the throat. The lump passes down toward the stomach in a slow, smooth movement.

It’s the finest vegetarian food-processor in the Early Cretaceous, a system that can start with dry, hard, dust-covered cycad foliage and convert it into easily digested plant pulp.

The iguanodon has modest powers of self-awareness. She feels happy and complacent and content. She feels efficient, in a vague I’m doing what I should be doing and I’m doing it well sort of way.

Still the iguanodon is alert. Her sense of smell is superb. She keeps track of the rest of the herd a few hundred yards upwind. Her large, clear blue eyes sweep a full 360 degrees every second or two. Her eye sockets project outward from her forehead, like cow eyes or deer eyes, so right and left visual fields can cover a zone in front, to the side, and dead ahead.

A faint crack in the bush makes her stop chewing.

She focuses her eyes and ears forward. It’s totally silent now. She can’t detect a scent - the sound came from the left downwind. She starts backing away, toward her herd.

There’s another crack of dried twigs being stepped on.

She hears a soft patter of feet on wet meadow, coming from the right, obliquely downwind, between herself and her herd. She tries to turn.

Whummp! A half-ton weight, moving fast, hits her body high on the right side. She falls. Another heavy weight falls on her neck, pinning her to the ground.

The two Utahraptors kill their victim efficiently, cleanly, with a flurry of slashes, hindclaws and fore-claws together.

Raptor Red stands up and makes sure that the rest of the iguanodon herd isn’t massing for a counterattack. Iguanodons sometimes charge a hundred strong and try to trample raptors.

Not this time. A few iguanodons stand tall and sniff and stare. But then the herd begins to wander off in the opposite direction.

Raptor Red’s sister begins to remove meat and pieces of liver.

The iguanodons' brains record the fact that a new hunting pack of Utahraptor is on the scene. Since a pack of two is ten times more dangerous than two independent raptors, the iguanodons will be extra cautious in the near future.

In the evening Raptor Red huddles close to her sister’s chicks, keeping them warm and dry in a den in the brush. Her sister sits up most of the night, alert, guarding her kin.

The evening is unpleasant, with a light drizzle and enough breeze to make Raptor Red shiver now and then. But it doesn’t matter. She’s enjoying a sound she hasn’t heard for a long time. Her sister’s snoring.

The youngsters and their mother fall asleep right away, aligned one next to another, heads and tails facing the same direction. Raptor Red lowers herself carefully between her sister and one of the youngsters, gently displacing the row of chicks. They make gurking noises but don’t wake up. Raptor Red leans just a little bit against her sister’s flank, which twitches several times. Her sister growls, opens one eye so she can see what woke her up, growls again, shifts her weight around, closes her eye tight, and resumes snoring.

That’s exactly the way Raptor Red remembers her.

Scratch, scratch, wiggle, scratch, scratch.

The Utahmptor chicks wake up scratching.

Oooomph - skunsh - SCRATCH.

Raptor Red and her sister wake up scratching too. The itchy feeling makes their spirits sag.

Both adults know what they’re scratching at.

Ticks. Tiny green and brown ticks. Ticks that thrive in the underbrush made damp by spring rains. Ticks that have a narcotic saliva so they can bore a hole with their snout straight through a raptor’s hide without the raptor knowing it. Ticks that are nearly impossible to scratch out once they have embedded themselves.

The adult Utahraptors fear ticks more than an angry herd of iguanodons, because ticks cause pain and disease and death.

Ordinarily the raptors would roll in soda mud to smother skin parasites. Back when she was growing up in Mongolia, Raptor Red followed her parents into a mud bath in a soda lake every other day in the spring. It usually worked adequately. The Mongolian ticks - most of them - would drop off after being coated in soda mud. Some would stay bored in, suck blood, drop off later on, and hatch their tick babies under a moist bush somewhere.

The native Mongolian ticks rarely debilitated their raptor hosts. These Utah ticks are different. Their borings into the skin cause nasty swelling. When the raptors scratch with their paws or rub against a rough-barked tree, the swellings get much worse. The Utahraptor’s internal defense - the immune system - seems unable to cope with the side effects of the Utah ticks.

The two raptor sisters and the three chicks walk over to the iguanodon and eat their fill. The two adults fidget and scratch and look at all the low trees nearby. They want to find a very special little animal, the only species that raptors view as a friend.

No luck. The pack wander over to the riverbank to drink. Raptor Red is much more nervous now than when she was alone. She is anxious for her sister’s chicks. Built into her mental processes is a computer that evaluates kinship. Her eyes and ears and especially her nose can detect another raptor who is close kin. Every breath she takes in company with her sister affirms their close blood bond. Her subconscious computer has a hard-and-fast rule: Take care of your own chicks first; each one is one half of yourself. Take care of your sister’s chicks next. Don’t waste time on any other blood relative.