The Dinosaur's Diary (Young Puffin Story Books) (2 page)

Sorry about the long gap. I meant to keep this diary every day but I’ve been too upset. Even when I realized I was ready to lay some new eggs, I didn’t feel much better.

But today has been so amazing, like some weird dream, that I simply must tell you about it.

This morning – it seems a lifetime ago! – I was wandering around
yet again
looking for a good egg-laying spot, when I heard a familiar crashing sound coming from the tall ferns. It sounded suspiciously like Τ Rex. But it wasn’t. It was a Megalosaurus – another of the awful, giant meat-eaters.

Once again, my little legs went into action. But the ground was covered in puddles and rocks. Meg could leap over these, but I had to splash through the puddles and dodge round the biggest rocks, which slowed me down.

I shouldn’t have glanced over my shoulder but I did, and that was how I tripped over a rock. I picked myself up quickly, but I had hurt my leg. I could only limp along. This is it, I thought to myself as the footsteps behind me grew louder.

I splashed into yet another puddle and then realized that it
wasn’t
a puddle – not an ordinary one, anyway. It was much deeper, more like a well. I was being sucked under the water. So I wasn’t going to be eaten; I was going to drown!

But I didn’t feel as if I was drowning. Strangely, I didn’t seem to need to breathe at all. I closed my eyes and let the water take me down, deeper and deeper.

I felt myself being sucked around a corner, and then I was rising. Up, up, up! Faster and faster, until my head popped out of the water.

Was I in the same puddle or a different one? Was the Megalosaurus there waiting for me?

I opened my eyes and when I blinked the water out of them I found I was in some sort of pond, along with two creatures I had never seen before in my life. They were small (smaller than me!) and feathery, with beaks, and they were swimming about making what I can only describe as a quacking sound.

When they saw me, they looked terrified. Fancy anyone being terrified of
me
! Flapping like mad they half-ran, half-flew out of the water on to an island in the middle of the pond. There they stood, beating their wings and sticking their necks out at me angrily.

‘Get out of our pond!’ they quacked.

I swam to the bank and clambered out. I took no more notice of the two Quackosaurs, or whatever they were called, because now I could hear another sound, one that I didn’t like at all. I looked around me to see where it was coming from.

There was no sign of the Megalosaurus, but in the distance I could see something even worse. Coming towards me over some strange-looking bumpy earth was a bright red monster. Instead of normal legs it had round ones that rolled across the ground. More alarming still, it was letting out a dreadful loud, deep roar.

I didn’t stop to find out any more; I took off. I had no idea where I was going, and I was still limping slightly, but at least the ground I was running over was quite soft: it was covered in some very short bright green plants. Where were the horsetails? Where were the tall ferns?

After several minutes I stopped and turned round. I could still see the big red creature in the distance, but it didn’t seem to be coming after me. In fact it was standing still and had stopped roaring.

I could hear something else though, and it sounded like laughter – or rather, high-pitched, twittery giggling, coming from above my head.

I looked up. Some creatures with wings and forked tails were flittering about in the air. They were even smaller than the Quackosaurs – a lot smaller, in fact.

‘What’s so funny?’ I asked them.

‘You are!’ said one of them cheekily. ‘Fancy running away from a tractor!’

‘Is that what that red monster is?’ I asked. ‘A – tractor, did you say? I suppose that must be short for Tractosaurus? Do you mean to say it’s a plant-eater?’

The fork-tails seemed to think this was funnier than ever. They broke out into fresh twitters.

This was too much. It was bad enough feeling scared and confused without being laughed at. I felt two tears prick my eyes.

The cheeky fork-tail must have noticed, because he suddenly became very polite and said, ‘Swallows here, Swinburne speaking, how may I help you?’

‘I don’t really know,’ I answered, but then I had an idea. ‘Maybe you could help me find somewhere to lay my eggs.’

‘How about the henhouse?’ suggested one of the swallows.

‘No, not the henhouse,’ said Swinburne. ‘We all know what happens to the eggs in the henhouse.’

‘
I
don’t,’ I admitted. ‘What does happen to them?’

‘They get boiled up for the farmer’s breakfast,’ said Swinburne.

‘Or scrambled,’ said another.

All the swallows started joining in:

‘Poached.’

‘Fried.’

‘Coddled.’

‘Made into cakes.’

‘Omelettes.’

‘Mayonnaise.’

This sounded terrible. I thought about the Comps. ‘Do these “farmer” creatures do their egg-hunting in gangs?’ I asked.

Instead of answering, Swinburne broke into another peal of twittery laughter, and the others joined in. I think this time they thought I was
trying
to be funny.

‘How about the barn – that’s where we lay our eggs,’ said Swinburne. ‘Come on and we’ll show you.’

The swallows flew off together, swooping and snapping at flies. Feeling as bewildered as ever I ran after them till they reached a strange
thing.
It was rather like a huge reddish rock, but I’d never seen such a straight, square rock before.

The swallows flew through an opening right
into
the thing. I hesitated outside, but Swinburne flew out again and said, ‘Come on! This is the barn!’ so I followed him in.

It was dim inside the barn. I couldn’t see the swallows at first, but there was a terrible din coming from above my head: ‘Tweetatweet! Tweetatweetit!’

‘What’s been keeping you, Swinburne? Can’t you hear they’re starving?’ came a voice. I looked up and saw a lot of saucers of mud on a high ledge. Swinburne and another swallow were perched on one of the mud saucers, out of which poked four noisy wide-open beaks.

‘Meet my wife, Swoop,’ said Swinburne. ‘Swoop, this is … er …’ ‘Hypsilophodon,’ I prompted him, ‘but you can call me H for short.’

Swoop said nothing and gave me a funny look.

‘Don’t mind her,’ said Swinburne. ‘She’s been suspicious of outsiders ever since the cat caught two of our babies last year.’

I didn’t ask what a cat was – I was afraid Swinburne would laugh at me again.

‘Anyway,’ went on Swinburne, after he had popped some flies into the open beaks, ‘this is the nesting place I was telling you about. The cat can’t climb up here.’

‘But neither can I,’ I complained. (Swoop looked relieved.)

‘How silly of me – so you can’t. What about the hay loft then?’ Swinburne pointed with a wing to a platform at the other end of the barn.

‘But how do I get up there?’ I asked.

‘Try the stairs,’ said Swinburne.

Do you know what stairs are? I didn’t, and they looked nasty and hard and steep, but when I tried it was easy enough to get up them.

At the top I found a mound of yellow stuff which was a real treat – warm and soft to lie on, and with such a good smell that I wondered if it might be good to eat too. I nibbled a little. It wasn’t bad, though not a patch on horsetails.

So that’s where I am now – lying on a bed of hay (which is what the yellow stuff is called). I’m much too tired for egg-laying, so I’ll have a sleep and think about eggs in the morning.

What a day!

The days have different names here, I’ve discovered. They’re not named after dinosaurs like they are back home. Today is named after the sun. Most peculiar.

The main news is that I’VE LAID MY EGGS. Just wait till I tell you where! But first I must tell you about this morning.

I woke with a start. The swallows were making a dreadful racket – not their usual twittering but a shriller, louder, panicky-sounding ‘Twhit! Twhit!
Twhit!’
It sounded like some kind of warning, and immediately I realized that that’s just what it was, because I could hear something else – the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs!

I scrabbled under the hay just in time, and kept completely still. Someone or something started rummaging around in the hay. I prayed that it wasn’t a meat-eating dinosaur. Surely whoever it was must be able to hear my heart thumping.

To my relief the rummaging stopped and I heard the footsteps disappear down the stairs.

I peeped out of the hay just in time to see a creature with floppy-looking blue skin walking out of the barn on its hind legs.

‘Who was that?’ I asked.

‘The farmer,’ said Swinburne.

‘The
farmer
!’ But that was the dreaded egg-eater, wasn’t it? ‘Oh no – was he looking for eggs?’

‘You are funny, H,’ said Swinburne. ‘No, he was just getting some hay.’

‘But I can’t lay my eggs here if this farmer creature is going to keep nosing around,’ I said.

‘No, I suppose not,’ said Swinburne. ‘Sorry about that. Maybe the junk corner would be a better place. The farmer hardly ever goes there. Come and see what you think.’

I lumbered down the stairs (which was much trickier than getting up them) and followed Swinburne to a dark corner of the barn. At first I couldn’t see much, but as my eyes grew used to the dim light I began to make out a jumble of strange objects.

‘These are all the old broken things the farmer doesn’t need – forks, spades, rakes, wheelbarrows …’

I didn’t take in any more because at that second I saw something which made me tremble all over. It was a monster like the one I saw yesterday on the lumpy earth, only this one was brown instead of red.

‘Help! A Tractosaurus!’ I squealed. I ran all the way back to the hay loft and buried myself again. It was a long while before Swinburne could persuade me to come out.

Trying not to laugh, he told me that a Tractosaurus (or tractor, as he insists on calling it) isn’t actually alive at all; it’s something called a machine, whatever that is. It doesn’t eat animals or plants; it just likes a drink called diesel but it can’t drink that all by itself – the farmer has to feed it.

I still wasn’t convinced. ‘But I saw the other one, the red one, running around and roaring.’

‘That’s because the farmer was driving it. But he can’t drive this one. It’s all old and rusty. It doesn’t work any more. That’s why it’s in the junk corner.’

At last I plucked up courage to go back. Sure enough, the Tractosaurus didn’t move when Swinburne perched on it or even when he giggled, flew above it and spattered it with some white stuff.

Feeling very brave, I reached out with one of my front legs and touched the Tractosaurus gently. It felt cold and hard.

‘I still don’t think this is a good nesting place,’ I said. ‘What I’d really like would be some nice mud.’

‘Mud!’ exclaimed Swinburne. ‘Really, H, why didn’t you say so before? We can find you plenty of that. Come on, mob, off to the pond!’ he called out to the other swallows. ‘You wait there, H.’

Before I could reply, the barn was a flurry of activity. The swallows had flown off their own nests and were helping to build mine!

In and out of the barn they flew. They flew out with empty beaks; when they returned their beaks were full of mud. Mind you, one swallow’s beakful is not much mud at all, but there were so many of them and they worked so fast that it soon mounted up. What bothered me was
where
it was mounting up – inside the Tractosaurus itself!

‘No – not there!’ I tried to tell them, but they took no notice. The rusty old Tractosaurus was to be the home for my eggs, and that was settled. Before long I had quite come round to the idea myself.

Swoop didn’t join in the mud-collecting: she stayed near her nest and looked quite disapproving, I thought. One of her babies had learned to fly but she wouldn’t let him join in either. ‘The cat might get you,’ she told him, but I couldn’t help wondering if it was really
me
she was scared of.

I must say, the mud-collectors did a brilliant job. Before long the inside of the Tractosaurus was looking lovely and squelchy, just like the swamp back home. Not at all afraid any more, I climbed up on to it. The swallows flew back to their nests; they knew that I would want to lay my eggs in private.

Swinburne was the last to leave. ‘Do let me see them when you’ve finished,’ he whispered. ‘I promise I won’t bring the mob with me.’

I dug into the mud – not too deep – squatted down, and at long last laid my eggs! Only thirteen of them this time, but if anything even more beautiful than the last lot.

I called softly to Swinburne. To my surprise, Swoop flew down with him. I hope she is beginning to come round to me a bit now that I have proved myself to be an egg-layer like her. But she didn’t look too impressed.

‘Hmm, thirteen – unlucky number,’ she muttered.

‘Aren’t they a wonderful green?’ I said. ‘And don’t you just love the black spots?’

‘Er, yes – very nice,’ said Swinburne, sounding a bit doubtful.

‘They’re certainly extremely
bright
,’ said Swoop. ‘Mine were white with pale brown speckles,’ she added proudly.

Privately I thought, How dull, but I didn’t say so.

Swoop flew back to her own nest, but Swinburne stayed and helped me cover the eggs up with bits of hay.

‘Are you going to sit on them now?’ he asked. I explained that I couldn’t do that for fear of crushing them, but that I would stay close by.

‘You’ll need a bed, then,’ said Swinburne, and he helped me fetch some more hay and spread it out on the floor beside the Tractosaurus.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and lay down gratefully.

I feel exhausted, but proud and happy. I have some new friends, a nice safe nest and some beautiful eggs. How, oh how I hope that this time they will hatch out and I will become a mother at last!