Although she had succeeded in filling her stomach, Amy was not feeling particularly content; let alone social or cheerful. She didn’t have it in her to seek out any company at the moment; her fear that the valley dinosaurs blamed her for bringing Red Claw’s wrath down upon themóthat they would shun her, or oust her from the valley entirelyówas too great. Perhaps this was why she found herself feeling so tired; her own stress and concern over the matter was so overwhelming that it was exhausting her.
As she trudged through the woods, hoping to find a place where she would be out of view of any of the resident dinosaurs, Amy spied a large tree with a sizeable hollow at its base. It was easily large enough to accommodate her, and looked like a private and comfortable place to rest. Entering the hollow, Amy lay down, and gradually drifted off to sleep.
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Having eaten his fill from the leafeater carcass, Red Claw lifted his head and stood back. While taking out his frustrations over the catastrophe of last night on the body of the dinosaur before him, the sharptooth had decided that he now had a new agenda; a new target on which to vent his anger over the loss of his eyesight, and the numerous additional ignominies he had suffered since.
“Screech, Thud,” he rumbled.
The two fast biters looked up from their own meals, anxious as to what their leader was about to tell them.
“Yes, Red Claw?” Thud inquired.
“It is clear to me that our little endeavor last night did not go as planned.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Screech muttered.
“In light of this, I have decided on a new course of action for us to take,” Red Claw continued, either ignoring or not hearing Screech’s remark.
Screech tensed. “Red Claw, enough of your schemes to catch that rock-blasted flyer!” He looked out over the field of dead bodies. “We have enough food here to last us for weeks! We should take this opportunity to rest and get our strength back, not continue to risk our necks for the sake of a single scrawny morsel and a petty grudge!”
“I am over the flyer.”
Screech blinked, his mind performing a double take. “What did you say?”
“I said, I am over the flyer,” Red Claw snarled. “I will obsess over catching her and making her suffer for what she did to my eyes no more.”
Screech had just enough time to experience a glimmer of relief before Red Claw continued: “Those leafeatersóall of themóhumiliated me last night, and I will make them all pay!”
The lower jaws of two fast biter jaws dropped open. An incredulous Screech was the first to pick his up. “Red Claw, have you lost youró? You can’t be serious! First the flyer, now all of those leafeaters? You want to hunt down every single one?”
“They have destroyed my reputation!” Red Claw bellowed. “I cannot allow them to remain witnesses to my…my failure!” He spat out the last word.
“Forget your reputation! What about your life?! You’ve almost killed yourself twiceóno…thrice!ógoing after that one flyer! How do you expect to best an entire herd of leafeaters?!”
“You dare imply that I cannot handle a single mangy flyer?” Red Claw snarled. “Those leafeaters last night were prepared; they came knowing that they would have to fight me. This time, I will strike when they least expect it; I will stalk them in the valley where they think themselves so safe and protected. I will kill every one of them, one by one.”
Screech and Thud found themselves at a loss to respond. They could think of a dozen flaws in Red Claw’s reasoning, but it was obvious to them that Red Claw had abandoned reason. It was clear that his sanity was in a downward spiral, and the fast biters feared what the powerful sharptooth would do next, now that he was pulling free of the constraints of rationality.
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Okay…almost there, Strut thought to himself as he approached the edge of the clearing that contained the nest. I’ll get to the nest, grab one egg, and get out of there before the mother comes back. Hmm…maybe I’ll take two or three; Ozzy’ll be proud of me, and I bet the mother won’t even notice. I mean, leafeaters lay lots of eggs, right? Truthfully, Strut had never done much nest-raiding on his own. Ozzy was almost always there with him, or took care of the egg-snatching himself. Ozzy did this mainly because he didn’t trust Strut not to bungle the job on his own, but secretly Strut was thankful for it. While he admitted that eggs were tasty, unlike his brother, he didn’t feel that they were worth risking his life over. He was content to eat green food and tree sweets; at least, he would be, if Ozzy weren’t so vehemently opposed to it.
Strut had finally reached the clearing. He pushed aside one last swathe of tall grass stems…and a yelp of alarm caught in his throat.
A full-grown hollowhorn was curled up asleep on the edge of the clearing. Ozzy must not have noticed it when he spotted the nest; from afar, the tall grass concealed most of its body, and anything that rose above would have appeared to be just another one of the boulders that dotted the meadow. Strut almost bolted back the way he came, before he noticed that the leafeater was currently asleep.
I can still do this, he thought. I just need to get the eggs without waking her up.
Strut tiptoed to the edge of the nest, making sure to keep one eye on the dozing hollowhorn. Scanning the nest in his peripheral vision, he spied a choice-looking egg, and cautiously reached down with one hand, gently grasping the top of the egg in his claws and lifting it out of the nest. He executed the whole maneuver flawlessly, not making a single sound as he removed the egg.
Unfortunately, Strut possessed poor perception in the department of causality. As he removed the egg from the nest, he deprived an adjacent egg of the support that had been propping it up. The egg rolled over, knocking against two other eggs on either side of its path and causing them, in turn, to jostle their neighbors. As a whole, the clutch barely shifted, but the hollow clatter of eggshell against eggshell was enough to induce the hollowhorn’s eyes to open.
Strut stood frozen in place, the lead in what was surely this world’s closest possible literal enactment of one being caught with their hand in the cookie jar. He hastily set the egg back in the nest as the glaring hollowhorn began to rise to its feet.
“Uhh…Great Valley Nest Patrol,” Strut offered weakly. “Just counting your eggs to make sure they’re all safe.” He flicked out a single claw and hovered it over the nest, pointing to egg in turn as he pretended to count them. “Yep, looks like they’re all there!” He grinned as innocently as he could.
The hollowhorn’s response was to rear back slightly, taking in a deep breath of air. Then it lunged forward, its forefeet hitting the ground as it bellowed in Strut’s face. The deafening, trumpetlike call, amplified by the leafeater’s hollow crest, must have been heard for miles around. Leaves were shaken loose from nearby trees, and flocks of small flyers took flight en masse from the canopy and ground alike. Strut himself was practically blown backward by the force of the sonic hurricane the hollowhorn was unleashing less than a foot in front of him, and as it was he barely remained standing.
“EGG STEALERS!” the hollowhorn blared. “EGG STEALERS IN THE VALLEY!”
Strut, ironically, didn’t hear the hollowhorn’s words, on account of the intense ringing in his ears preventing him from hearing much at all, but he knew well enough that it would be wise on his part to get very far away very quickly.
“What have you done?!” Ozzy hollered at Strut as the latter egg stealer returned to the former’s hiding place behind the boulder.
“What?” Strut shouted, still deafened from the hollowhorn trumpeting in his face. “No, I didn’t get one!”
In the not-so-distant distance, the hollowhorn could be heard continuing to publicize the egg stealers’ presence through her trumpeting calls and ear-splitting shouts.
“Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into!” Ozzy snapped. “Now the whole valley knows we’re here!”
“Huh? I can’t hear you!” Strut yelled out, cupping a hand to his ear. “You say your nose is clear? That’s good to hear! I suppose getting hit there all the time might make it kind of stuffy, huh?”
Ozzy facepalmed. “Never mind! Let’s go, before those leaf-lunchers surround us!”
“I agree completely…with whatever it is you just said!” Strut said loudly. “And by the way, maybe we should get out of here in case someone in the valley hears that hollowhorn and finds out we’re here!”
“Arrrrrrrgh…Come on!” Ozzy growled as he hurriedly dragged his brother off.
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Pangaea had been about to suggest to Daniel that he might be able to find a thermal to practice flying on in the Great Valley when a sound like a high-pitched foghorn (and just as loud) rang out across the valley. It startled him so much that he jumped, accidentally slapping Guido in the face with a wet wing as he clapped his hands to his ear holes.
“What in the Mesozoic was that?” he asked.
“I…I think it was a hollowhorn,” Guido said, shaking water from his face as he too covered his ears.
Ohhh… A Parasaurolophus; I thought so, Pangaea mused. I wonder why it’s calling like that… Is it really true that they use sound to shake down foliage?; is that what that one’s doing right now? If that’s the case, funny that I haven’t heard it before; there must be plenty of hollowhorns in the valley, and you’d think that at least one of them would have employed that feeding strategy in the time I’ve been here. Maybe the other dinosaurs don’t like them to do it because it disturbs the peace, and that one’s justó?
Pangaea’s train of thought came to a halt as the hollowhorn finished its trumpeting, and its distant voice could be heard calling out:
”Egg stealers! Egg stealers in the valley!”
Suddenly, the reason for the hadrosaur’s aerophonic outburst became clear.
“Oh, crap,” Pangaea muttered. “What have those two gotten themselves into now?”
