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Authors: Dick King-Smith

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BOOK: Dinosaur Trouble
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Thinking about his new friend, Nosy had become worried about her. He knew all about T. rex—he'd seen one, close up, after all—but he was pretty sure that Banty did not.
Obviously her parents had never told her, never warned her of the danger of the plain's fiercest flesh-eater. They just hope, he supposed, that she'll never meet one.
She should be told,
he thought
. I'll get Mom and
Daddy to tell her, and I might even be able to persuade them to fly over and have a chat with Banty's ma and pa.
With all this in mind, he had flown off very early that morning in search of his friend. By luck, he found her at the lake's edge. He glided down.
“Hello, Banty!” he called.
Banty looked up.
“Oh, hello, Nosy!” she cried. “Where are you off to?”
“I've just come to see you,” Nosy said. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Well, how would you like to come and see where I live with my mom and my daddy?”
“Where's that?”
“In the woods. It's not far. You wouldn't be scared, would you?”
“Scared?” said Banty. “Of what?”
“Oh, of … um … leaving your ma and pa for a while.”
“No,” said Banty. “They probably won't even notice I'm gone.”
“Well, come on, then,” said Nosy. “I'll fly very slowly above to show you the way.”
And to keep a good lookout for You-Know-Who,
he thought.
 
Before long, Banty was standing in the pterodactyls' wood, looking up at Clawed and Aviatrix as they hung, still asleep above her. They were on a fresh branch because, the previous evening, Nosy had persuaded his parents to move. He didn't want Banty to have to stand in a bed of deep, pongy poo.
“Mom, Daddy, wake up!” he called, hitching onto the branch beside them. “I've brought my friend Banty to meet you.”
Aviatrix opened her eyes and looked down in horror at the baby apatosaurus. The shock rendered her speechless.
“Good morning, Nosy's mom,” said Banty in the politest of tones. “I'm very pleased to meet you. Nosy thought I might like to see the wood where you live. It's beautiful, isn't it?”
“It's pulchritudinous,” said Nosy.
“Nosy tells me,” said Banty, “that you have taught him a great many long words. You must be very clever.”
“Sagacious,” said Nosy.
“That, too,” said Banty.
“The epithets are synonymous,” said Aviatrix.
Quite a nice little thing,
she thought
. Well, not little, but nice. Good manners.
At this point Clawed woke up. He was about to do a poo, always his first act of the day, but seeing what stood below him, he refrained.
“Who's this?” he said.
“My friend, Daddy,” said Nosy.
“Good morning, sir,” said Banty.
Clawed was so astonished at being addressed with such respect that he almost fell off the branch.
“Morning,” he said.
“Her name is Banty, Daddy,” said Nosy, “and I've brought her to see you and Mom for a very special reason, knowing how clever you both are.”
Aviatrix looked very pleased at this, Clawed very puzzled.
“And what is this very special reason?” asked Aviatrix.
“I want you to warn her,” said Nosy.
“Warn her? Against what?”
“T. rex.”
“What's that?” asked Banty.
“Tyrannosaurus rex,”
replied Aviatrix. “The fiercest of the carnivores.”
“Please, Nosy's Mom—what is a carnivore?”
“A meat-eater. And stop calling me ‘Nosy's Mom.' My name is Aviatrix.”
“And mine's Clawed,” said Clawed, “but you
can go on calling me ‘sir' if you like—I quite fancy it.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Nosy.
“We all are,” said Clawed, taking a fresh grip on the branch with his large talons.
“No, Daddy, I mean, let me tell you what's worrying me. You can see that Banty's parents have never told her about T. rex, though I don't know why. Which means she's in terrible danger if she ever comes across one.”
“She is vulnerable,” said Aviatrix.
“What's that mean, Avy?” asked Clawed.
“Capable of being physically wounded or injured or, in Banty's case, killed and eaten.”
Banty shuddered (and when an apatosaurus, even a small one, shudders, it's quite a sight).
“What does this awful thing look like?” she said, and the two adult pterodactyls told her, each in its own way.
Aviatrix's description was full of long words like
formidable, terroristic, repulsive, and unprepossessing.
Clawed, who understood none of these adjectives, simply said, “Big and scary.”
“But surely, sir,” said Banty, “this T. rex creature couldn't kill something as big as an apatosaurus?”
“Easily,” said Clawed.
“And you're only a baby one,” said Aviatrix.
By now she had warmed to this odd-looking, innocent young animal.
“You must take great care, Banty, dear,” she said. “We can always escape by flying, but you can't.”
“Mom, Daddy,” said Nosy, “please could you do my friend here a big favor?”
“Indubitably,” said his mother, “and before
you ask me, Clawed, that means without a doubt.”
“What d'you want?” asked Clawed.
“Could you both come over to the lake with me so that you can meet Banty's parents? Neither of us knows why, but they don't seem to like pterodactyls, and you don't like apatosauruses. Banty and I are friends, but wouldn't it be nice if we were all friends—both families, I mean?”
“Would you like us to come, Banty?” Nosy's mother asked.
“Oh yes, I would, please!”
“Then we will,” said Clawed. “I could do with a drink anyway.”
“Banty! Banty!” called Gargantua and Titanic as they lumbered around the rim of the lake, but there was no response.
When they stopped to get their breath, at a point that chanced to be the nearest to the distant woods, Gargantua gasped, “It couldn't have taken her, could it?”
Titanic looked puzzled.
“What couldn't have taken who?” he asked.
“That T. rex we've just seen, you fool,” said Gargantua. “Could it have taken our Banty?”
Titantic considered.
“Don't think so,” he said. “It didn't have anything in its mouth, and we weren't submerged long enough for it to have time to—”
“Stop!” cried Gargantua. “Don't say it.” And she shuddered the most enormous apatosaurian shudder.
Just then they saw, flying toward them from the direction of the woods, three pterodactyls. There was a little one, a big one, and a very big one.
“We could ask those wotchermecallits if they've seen her,” Titanic said.
“Pterodactyls!” said Gargantua scornfully. “They wouldn't know the difference between an iguanodon and a triceratops. Stupid things! I've no use for them.”
At that moment the small pterodactyl detached itself from the two much larger ones, which were flying very slowly, and flew very quickly toward the apatosauruses.
“Ugh!” said Gargantua. “One of them is coming straight to us. If it speaks, don't answer, Titanic.”
“Good morning!” squeaked Nosy when he reached them. “I've a favor to ask you. Could I introduce my mom and my daddy to you?” There was no answer.
“Oh,” said Nosy, “we've got Banty with us,” he added.
“What?” bellowed both apatosauruses.
“We've got Banty. We've brought her home,” said Nosy. “Look, you can see her now.”
Titantic and Gargantua stretched up their long necks to the fullest extent, and there was their missing daughter, coming toward them, escorted by the two big pterodactyls, which were flying very slowly above her.
“Oh, my Banty!” called Gargantua, waddling forward. “You're safe!”
“Ma thought you might have been eaten by that T. rex,” said Titanic.
“Oh, you saved her!” cried Gargantua to Aviatrix and Clawed. “You saved my Banty! Oh, how can we ever thank you enough?”
Clawed looked extremely puzzled.
“Saved her?” he began, but Aviatrix quickly interrupted him.
“We are glad to have been of help,” she said to Gargantua. “We weren't sure if Banty was aware of certain dangers.”
“Like T. rex,” said Clawed. “Although actually …”
“Be quiet a minute, Clawed,” said Aviatrix, and “Hang on, Daddy,” said Nosy, a suggestion that his father instantly obeyed, on a branch of the nearest tree.
Aviatrix and Nosy, hovering above, looked down at Banty, and she looked up at them, and
each knew exactly what the others were thinking.
Let my ma and pa believe that the pterodactyl family did rescue me somehow,
thought Banty, just as Aviatrix and Nosy thought,
Let's pretend we
did
rescue her. That way they'll be very grateful and we'll all be the best of friends.
When the apatosaruses had finished nuzzling the child they thought they had lost, Gargantua started to make a speech.
“First of all,” she said to Aviatrix and Nosy, “please do join your, er …”
“Husband,” said Aviatrix.
“Daddy,” said Nosy.
“ … on that branch. So much less tiring than having to beat your wings all the time,” and when they took her advice, she went on to address the three of them.
“I cannot begin to tell you,” she said, “how grateful Titanic …”
“Your husband?” said Aviatrix.
“My daddy,” said Banty.
“ … how grateful we are to all of you for saving our beloved child. We have met dear little Nosy before and now are honored to be introduced to his parents, though I fear I do not know your names.”
“Aviatrix,” said Nosy's mother.
“Clawed,” said his father.
“I,” said Banty's mother, “am Gargantua, and my husband, Titanic, and we are the happiest apatosauruses in the world thanks to your pterodactylic heroism in rescuing our Banty from the clutches of T.rex.”
“But—,” said Clawed.
“Hang on, dear,” said Aviatrix.
“I am hanging on.”
“If you will allow me to say so,” went on Aviatrix, “I think that perhaps you, as Banty's parents, should have made her more aware of the danger posed by a certain carnivore …”
“T. rex,” said Clawed.
“ … danger,” continued Aviatrix, “of which she may have known nothing.”
“We should! We should!” cried Gargantua. “Just think, Titanic, she might have become the prey of that T. rex that came to the lake if this brave pterodactyl family had not somehow rescued her. Oh, how grateful we are to you all!”
Clawed, as so often, looked puzzled.
“We rescued her, did we, Avy?” he asked.
“Of course we did!” said Aviatrix and Nosy.
Now Titanic cleared his very long throat.
“As head of the family,” he said to Clawed, “I must thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart.”
Clawed had by now realized that, what with one thing and another, he had not yet performed what was usually his first act of the day, and in some confusion at this thought and at once again being addressed as “sir,” he became muddled and replied, “It is I who must thank you, from the heart of my bottom.”
Then he spread his huge wings and flew hastily away to a branch on another tree, where he did his morning poo out of sight of the rest.
BOOK: Dinosaur Trouble
10.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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