RAPTOR RED

THE END OF UTAHRAPTOR MARCH

The night is chilled with more spring snow. Raptor Red spends the night awake, lying curled around one side of her sister, the older chick on the other. There is a weak sound of breathing.

In the morning Raptor Red sniffs the air - it’s full of dangerous scents. There are two or three species of strange herbivores moving in large groups on the plateau above and in the valley beyond the trees. There is a strong smell of deinonychs.

Raptor Red decides she must get the pack back to the safety of the cave, and she gently takes hold of her sister with forepaws and muzzle. She moves ten steps up the hill, half dragging, half carrying her sister’s body. But then Raptor Red feels her own left leg collapse and she slumps down again. She sighs and sits down. She starts to whimper, but the noise upsets the chicks, so she becomes quiet again.

Her sister opens her eyes - she has a wild, unfocused look. Her body quivers, and there’s a spasm of movement in tail and neck. Raptor Red now sees that one broken rib has pushed its jagged end through her sister’s skin. The older chick tries to lift her mother’s head up, then drops it and stares at Raptor Red.

Raptor Red still has hope. She knows a raptor body can take a terrible beating and still recover - if the pack feeds the invalid and protects him or her from extreme cold or heat. Raptor Red has seen it before. Back when she was a chick in Asia, an uncle came back to the nest horribly cut up by a rival raptor pack - and he was back on his feet in a week.

Maybe we can make a nest here - maybe the pack can protect my sister here is her thought. She drags her sister under a tree where a pile of fallen branches provides ready-made bedding.

Her sister opens her eyes again and looks at Raptor Red. Raptor Red is puzzled - her sister’s gaze is calm and steady and doesn’t have that frantic energy Raptor Red is used to seeing. The older chick nuzzles her mother’s snout.'

Raptor Red feels very maternal. She senses an expansion of her family responsibility. She touches both chicks on the snout-tip. The younger chick snuggles closer. The older chick backs away. At least for the immediate future, Raptor Red knows that two chicks are hers to feed and protect whether they like it or not.

Raptor Red is feeling her species-heritage. The duty of raising youngsters automatically shifts to the sister of the dead or injured mother.

Her new sense of shared motherhood gives

Raptor Red a ferocious desire to live. She tries out her left leg - it hurts, but she has some confidence that she’ll be able to walk and hunt in a day or so. Her right leg, body, tail, and arms are uninjured and strong.

She looks down across the valley to scan for trouble. She sees nothing. She looks and sniffs up-slope. All scent of the whip-tail has evaporated. The older chick joins her in sniffing and staring.

Raptor Red’s subconscious evaluates the pack’s situation. Worries, hopes, and conclusions well up. She weighs the need to rest her injured leg against the necessity of getting meat to the pack: Tomorrow morning - when my leg is better - I’ll go hunting - I’ll bring back food.

The next day Raptor Red’s leg is still stiff. The older chick is already awake, preening her mother.

7 can’t do it by myself, Raptor Red thinks as she stretches her legs and tries a series of steps. All she can manage is a quick hopping walk. Not good enough for efficient hunting. She hasn’t been forced to hunt by herself in nine months. And even then at least her legs were in good shape, and all she had to do was feed herself. Now she’s faced with the responsibility of providing meat for her three kin as well.

Raptor Red feels depressed and inadequate. I’m the only adult, and I can’t do it.

Her sister hasn’t moved during the night and now looks up at Raptor Red with a strange stare. Raptor Red is puzzled by the expression - her sister’s pupils are dilated, and there seems to be no pain in her eyes.

Raptor Red fidgets and frets, moving away from the temporary nest, hobbling back, and sniffing the air. Whump! She gets nudged hard by the older chick, who stands tall and bobs her head twice. This is an adult gesture - it means, Take me hunting!

Raptor Red stands still, trying to think for a half minute. The chick rams her again, this time on the chest.

Raptor Red’s mood changes. It could work. Yes -you must play the adult role now - LET’S GO!

Then she nudges the older chick gently, and they leave together.

Raptor Red leads the chick along the watercourses and through gullies, hoping to find the dead body of a fish or a land creature killed by the snow.

All morning the two search for food with no success. Just as Raptor Red is beginning to feel exhausted from hours of hobbling around on her bad leg, she breathes in that scent that brings joy to the heart of all predators.

Carrion!

A dead segnosaur is lying half hidden under some conifer branches. The older chick bounds over to the body and gives a victory whoop, and Raptor Red limps over to join her. It’s a most fortunate find - the segnosaur is spiced just right by early decomposition.

As the chick saws off meat chunks, Raptor Red examines the surrounding ground for ownership marks. The way branches have been dragged over the carcass is sure evidence that this segnosaur had been claimed by some other meat-eater.

She finds fresh deinonych sign - dung-marks left near the carcass. And she sees furtive movement beyond the trees: a trio of female deinonychs, the original possessors of the carcass. The 120-pound deinonychs are too afraid to make any challenge to the Utahraptor pair.

Raptor Red’s leg aches at every step as they return to the temporary nest, but her spirits are high. Inside their gullets are warm hunks of meat ready to be regurgitated to their kin. The younger chick zips back and forth in front of the nest, cooing and begging at the muzzles of the returning hunters. The older chick regurgitates meat to her younger sibling, and Raptor Red gently lays some morsels down in front of her sister.

Raptor Red’s sister sniffs the meat, takes a tiny bite, swallows hard, and closes her eyes.

Raptor Red has a feeling that maybe it will be all right.

Raptor Red and the older chick return daily for two weeks, salvaging all of the segno carcass, carrying back meat in their gullets and bones in their jaws. It seems to Raptor Red that her sister is getting better.

On the fifteenth day Raptor Red sits watching her sister until late afternoon, worrying when her breathing becomes labored, cheering up every time her sister opens her eyes and tries to swallow a little more segno flesh. Snow begins to fall again.

Raptor Red is so preoccupied with her sister’s recovery that she doesn’t see the group of strangers approaching. The older chick gives the sentry alarm.

Raptor Red hears the chick’s deep growl and stares in the direction the chick is looking. A dozen dark figures are moving in a wide semicircle up the valley, across the new snow.

The wind picks up, and Raptor Red flinches as wet snowflakes fall against her eye. Who are those animals? Her mind tries to play tricks on her, hope overcoming her usual caution. Maybe they’re a herd of small herbivores. She can see nearly two dozen now.

The wind shifts, bringing up the scent from the intruders. Raptor Red’s olfactory system gives the identification.

The strangers are raptors. A pack of deinonychs, a very big pack. The three females who had killed the segno are part of this pack.

The deinonychs are moving slowly, following the scent of the segnosaur meat, advancing with tentative steps, heads down, staring intently at Raptor Red and her little group. Ordinarily, Utah-raptor scent would cause terror in their minds - even the biggest alpha male deinonych is no more than 150 pounds, a tiny fraction of the big raptor’s size.

But deinonychs are clever opportunists. The pack has sensed that there is something wrong with the Utahraptors up ahead. Healthy Utahraptors would never let deinonychs come so close without attacking. And they’ve seen Raptor Red limping.

Raptor Red rises to her feet. She tries to look tall and dangerous. The older chick too lifts her head and assumes a threatening stance. The deinonychs stop. Two of the pack retreat, but the leaders stand still.

A hot spasm of pain makes Raptor Red’s left leg fold up, and she starts to fall, catching herself with her arm. The deinonychs all raise their heads simultaneously and stare. Then they all advance.

The older chick screams at them and looks back and forth from the deinonychs to Raptor Red. The deinonychs slow down, then speed up, spreading out into a wide semicircle.

At a range of twenty feet the deinonych pack pauses again. Raptor Red knows she must do something before the deinonychs cut off the line of retreat toward the cave. She flexes her legs and lunges half a body length. The Deinonychus pack recoils, fleeing to the treeline. Then they return. Raptor Red lunges again. The pack retreats, but not as far this time.

The deinonych pack tests Raptor Red. They’re quick learners. They’ve decided that this adult Utahraptor is weak and crippled - a discovery that gives them courage.

Now they come with heads high and clawed hands flexing and unflexing. Their eyes are fixed on Raptor Red. She doesn’t move, except for her breathing.

One of the lead deinonychs makes a quick running jump and lands a few feet from Raptor Red’s sister. He opens his jaw wide.

The biggest deinonych, the alpha male of the pack, steps close, his mouth open. He weaves his head backward and forward, evaluating Raptor Red, the big chick, and Raptor Red’s sister. Two more deinonych males approach from the other side. Raptor Red is worried - with her injured leg she can’t defend the nest from all sides. One wounded adult Utahraptor just isn’t enough.

But just as the alpha deinonych crouches to attack, the big chick becomes a Utahraptor fury - screaming in a deep voice and making short charges. Two male deinonychs hop backward, and the alpha male flinches, taking his eyes off Raptor Red for just one second.

That second is long enough. Raptor Red makes her move. Her long arms shoot out and grab the alpha male. Her right leg hooks his rib cage from underneath. With all her strength she kicks.

The deinonych leader feels his body being lifted completely off his feet and hurled five yards in the air. He hits the snow and slides on his backside, colliding with three of his packmates and coming to rest upside down against a tree. The other deinonychs scurry in all directions. Their leader gets to his feet and staggers away.

Raptor Red looks down at the confusion that she and the chick have caused. For an hour the deinonych pack moves around uneasily a quarter-mile away. Two large males approach the alpha male and dispute his position of leadership - his ignominious fall down the slope has lost him the respect of the rest of the pack. He backs away and retreats to the rear of the deinonych horde.

Raptor Red tries to hide the fact that her body has been thoroughly crippled by that last defensive kick. Her entire left side is immobilized by pain that shoots from hip to knee to ankle. She knows she cannot defend herself or her family anymore - but maybe she won’t have to. Maybe the deinonychs have lost heart.

The deinonych pack does make a disorganized retreat to beyond a treeline.

The older chick hops over to Raptor Red and gives a war-whoop of victory. Raptor Red feels like cheering herself, despite her pain. We did well - we defended our family - we did very well, she thinks.

Raptor Red drags herself to the temporary nest -she wants to share the victory with her sister.

Ooop-oop-oop. Raptor Red coos a happy greeting. Her sister doesn’t answer. Her eyes are wide open and still. Raptor Red sits quietly for ten minutes. Her sister’s chest doesn’t move, and her eyes don’t blink as heavy snowflakes pile up around the eye socket.

It takes several hours for Raptor Red to accept the reality of her sister’s death. Her left knee throbs terribly, but she doesn’t notice. What she does feel is a near total loss of energy, as if the wind has been knocked out of her lungs and she can’t inflate them again. Her sister was the one individual for whom Raptor Red would and did sacrifice her own well-being.

She looks around. She’s alone. The two chicks are gone, their lingering scent trail leading upslope, in the direction of the cave. Raptor Red is unable to move. For the first time in her life, there’s no spark inside, no motivation to struggle, to figure things out.

The snow blows in unpredictable gusts, and Raptor Red’s body begins to shake in convulsive bursts of muscle contraction. Shivering like this will exhaust her in a hour. And then, her metabolic reserves used up, she will freeze to death.

Raptor Red lays herself against her sister’s body. Its residual heat helps keep her warm for a few minutes longer. The cold has eased the pain in Raptor Red’s left knee. Gradually she loses feeling in her other limbs too.

And she doesn’t care.

A dull, heavy feeling of failure falls on her. She doesn’t review her life one memory frame at a time. But deep in her consciousness she is aware that she’s failed in the great tasks Nature gives each female Utahraptor. She lost her original mate before they reproduced. Then she lost another mate, still without producing chicks. And now she has lost her sister’s orphans.

Raptor Red has a deep sense that the chicks have little chance in this dangerous region by themselves. Even the older chick isn’t ready to survive on her own yet without an adult to help.

Raptor Red feels pain in her head. Her ears ache from the cold, and it hurts to breathe. She can still smell, though. She smells the pine trees and the segno bones. And now she smells the deinonych pack. They’re coming back.