RAPTOR RED

RELUCTANT SISTER-IN-LAW JUNE

He came with a dried-up turtle in his mouth. He walks with exaggerated steps, bringing his knees high, silently, like a dinosaurian mime.

Raptor Red has been watching him for several minutes now. The young male has already completed the first act of the dance. Now he’s beginning the much more difficult second act. She hasn’t awakened her sister, who is snoring loudly, lying on her side because her gut is too stuffed to lie on her stomach.

The male raptor lowers his head almost to the ground and swings it left and right. This part of the courtship dance is the toughest. The slow-motion head and neck gestures are done with the hands pulled back against the chest. Balancing is difficult. Proper execution of the dance requires that the deadly hand claws be out of sight - there can be no suggestion of a threat.

Raptor Red marvels at the smooth execution of the dance. Intuitively she knows that only a male in the peak of health can perform this way. She begins to flex and extend her own knees and ankles just a little bit, while she remains sitting, following with her eyes the step routine the male is performing.

She hasn’t the slightest interest in the dried turtle as a food item. It’s a symbolic gift. Even if she were hungry, she wouldn’t look at the turtle as lunch. Long, long ago, a thousand generations or more, raptor males gave fresh meat, recently killed, as a gift to reluctant females. It was a courtship bribe -and a promise of parental duties that would be fulfilled.

Take this meat - see, I can help feed you and our unborn chicks was the message.

Now Raptor Red is watching a gift-dance of stylized formality, the program rewritten and rewritten again by that most innovative of choreographers, natural selection.

Raptor Red knows what she likes in a male dancer - slender, muscular limbs, and supple S-curves in neck movement - but she doesn’t know why. She was born with a vague idea of male beauty, an idea that was refined by watching her mother and father. She doesn’t know that these strict standards will help guarantee a mate who will be faster than she and more maneuverable - key assets when lovers hunt together as a team.

Raptor Red doesn’t know the history of her own species. Only one kind of animal will ever evolve the capacity to discover its own past - that will be Homo sapiens, a hundred and twenty million years hence.

But Raptor Red does know that she wants a male at least as good as the one she lost. Better. Her standards are much higher than average for her species.

Now she is very, very impressed.

The male reaches far forward and, without the slightest muscular tremor, stretches his neck a few inches above the ground, extends his snout, opens his jaws, and drops the turtle a yard from Raptor Red’s feet.

He withdraws by walking slowly backward, facing Raptor Red as a medieval servant faces some all-powerful empress, his eyes focused on the ground.

At the last moment he stumbles on a half-buried astro rib. But he recovers - it’s an almost-invisible error in his program.

Raptor Red cocks her head, as if she were disturbed. It’s the response she’s supposed to give, to make the male more nervous. But in reality she doesn’t mind at all.

Quite splendid - overall, she is thinking in unspoken judgment. If she had a concept of numbers, she’d give him a 9.6 out of 10.0 for the execution of the dance, and a 10.0 for the difficulty of the routine he chose.

There is a long pause. The male looks up from the corner of his eye but doesn’t move. Raptor Red feigns disinterest. She looks up at some big dactyls - they’re Criorhynchus, big fellows with vertical crests on their snout tips. She yawns. She hisses at the dactyls.

Now she looks at the turtle. It’s been dead for a month, at least. There’s hardly any digestible meat left.

The male shifts his weight on his legs. His calf muscles are cramping.

Raptor Red picks up the turtle and flips it in the air high above her muzzle. To the male, the turtle seems suspended, turning in slow motion in the air. He’s just about decided that Raptor Red will let it drop.

Gulp! The turtle disappears down her gullet. The brief taste she got was quite terrible, and she’ll throw the turtle back up in five minutes.

That won’t matter. The male stands up, tall, and lets his hands fall straight down. He walks over to Raptor Red and sits down next to her and begins to groom her neck lightly.

Hisssss … HSSSsss. Raptor Red’s sister wakes up and stares angrily at the male. She tries to get up, baring her teeth. The chicks get alarmed and retreat to the top of a tussock. But Raptor Red’s sister’s belly is just too full. She doesn’t have the energy to generate a full-scale threat. And Raptor Red doesn’t even turn around to acknowledge her sister’s displeasure.

Laboriously, Raptor Red’s sister drags her bloated body over to where the chicks are and lies down in front of them.

She sighs - as if to say, All right, if you insist, I won’t bite him - but keep him away from me and my chicks.