shakes out a feather duster, and we had to hang on for dear life.
“Goodness, but I wish he would stop that infernal shaking!” wheezed the Professor, hugging the rough trunk in his skinny arms. “And if only he would go away—I am far too old for these acrobatics!”
Then followed one of the most ludicrous scenes I have ever witnessed. For, whipping off his sun helmet, to which he had tenaciously clung all this while, he began flapping it at the triceratops below like a man trying to drive away an annoying mosquito.
“Shoo, you nasty thing!—Go away!—Leave us alone, now!—We have no time for this nonsense—Shoo!” he shrilled in an exasperated tone of voice. The monster craned its neck skyward, blinking those tiny piggish eyes at the small, scrawny man above.
I began to laugh so hard I nearly fell off my branch, for the expression on the triceratops’ face (or what passed for its face, at least) seemed to me one of blank bafflement. Oh, sure, I know the monster’s leathery visage was incapable of displaying any expression, but that’s what it looked like to me. It was as if the brute was reacting to a novel experience: for, surely, not too many triceratopses in this day and age have ever been angrily “shooed” by a shorttempered professor!
* * * *
Our salvation arrived right on schedule, shortly after the shooing. And it took a quite unexpected form.…
Vegetation crackled, branches snapped and crunched, as a second huge form came lumbering out of the jungle. I took one look and let my jaw drop down to about here: for I had expected another dinosaur, from all the noise, but what emerged into view was a very big elephant wearing a fur coat!
Our visitor was easily twice the size of any elephant I have ever seen, and entirely covered with a long and wavy blanket of coarse red hair. From beneath its long, prehensile trunk sprouted two fantastic ivory tusks, each a good twelve feet long, and these were extravagantly curled.
I exchanged a look with the Professor, and he was as glazed of eye and dangly of jaw as I.
“But this is utterly impossible…” he whispered, half to himself. “A wooly mammoth from the Ice Age!…How could it possibly coexist with one of the great carnosaurs?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Why, the mammoths date from the Pleistocene, only one or two million years ago, and the triceratops is a Mesozoic reptile!…the two monsters come from ages nearly one hundred and fifty million years apart.…This is utterly fantastic! ”
And what followed was even more fantastic: a duel to the death between hyper-elephant and superrhino.
Upon spying the dinosaur, the enormous mammoth stopped short. Flapping his ears he lifted his long trunk, giving voice to an enraged squeal of ear-ripping intensity, like a steam whistle gone mad. I got a hunch that this was Jumbo’s personal hunting ground, and that the triceratops was intruding where he was not welcome.
As for the dinosaur, he was in a furious temper, anyway, from his frustration at not yet being able to shake down the lunch he had treed. Squaring off, pawing the mud with one enormous forefoot, he lowered his head, aimed that thick, stubby, pointed horn—and charged!
He caught the mammoth right below the knee, goring him deeply. With a scream of pain and fury, the hairy brute went down on all fours with a thump that shook the ground. Then, swinging its huge head from side to side, the mammoth caught the triceratops across one beefy shoulder with the point of his curlicue tusks, ripping open a longjagged gash between two plates of the reptile’s armor.
Honking furiously, the dinosaur backed off, snorting and pawing the mud, gathering his energies for another charge. The mammoth climbed to his feet again, slightly favoring his gored leg.
The two monsters charged at each other, and when they met it was like two armored tanks colliding. The impact was terrific, but neither monster seemed even slightly dazed. And in the next
“Goodness, but I wish he would stop that infernal shaking!” wheezed the Professor, hugging the rough trunk in his skinny arms. “And if only he would go away—I am far too old for these acrobatics!”
Then followed one of the most ludicrous scenes I have ever witnessed. For, whipping off his sun helmet, to which he had tenaciously clung all this while, he began flapping it at the triceratops below like a man trying to drive away an annoying mosquito.
“Shoo, you nasty thing!—Go away!—Leave us alone, now!—We have no time for this nonsense—Shoo!” he shrilled in an exasperated tone of voice. The monster craned its neck skyward, blinking those tiny piggish eyes at the small, scrawny man above.
I began to laugh so hard I nearly fell off my branch, for the expression on the triceratops’ face (or what passed for its face, at least) seemed to me one of blank bafflement. Oh, sure, I know the monster’s leathery visage was incapable of displaying any expression, but that’s what it looked like to me. It was as if the brute was reacting to a novel experience: for, surely, not too many triceratopses in this day and age have ever been angrily “shooed” by a shorttempered professor!
* * * *
Our salvation arrived right on schedule, shortly after the shooing. And it took a quite unexpected form.…
Vegetation crackled, branches snapped and crunched, as a second huge form came lumbering out of the jungle. I took one look and let my jaw drop down to about here: for I had expected another dinosaur, from all the noise, but what emerged into view was a very big elephant wearing a fur coat!
Our visitor was easily twice the size of any elephant I have ever seen, and entirely covered with a long and wavy blanket of coarse red hair. From beneath its long, prehensile trunk sprouted two fantastic ivory tusks, each a good twelve feet long, and these were extravagantly curled.
I exchanged a look with the Professor, and he was as glazed of eye and dangly of jaw as I.
“But this is utterly impossible…” he whispered, half to himself. “A wooly mammoth from the Ice Age!…How could it possibly coexist with one of the great carnosaurs?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Why, the mammoths date from the Pleistocene, only one or two million years ago, and the triceratops is a Mesozoic reptile!…the two monsters come from ages nearly one hundred and fifty million years apart.…This is utterly fantastic! ”
And what followed was even more fantastic: a duel to the death between hyper-elephant and superrhino.
Upon spying the dinosaur, the enormous mammoth stopped short. Flapping his ears he lifted his long trunk, giving voice to an enraged squeal of ear-ripping intensity, like a steam whistle gone mad. I got a hunch that this was Jumbo’s personal hunting ground, and that the triceratops was intruding where he was not welcome.
As for the dinosaur, he was in a furious temper, anyway, from his frustration at not yet being able to shake down the lunch he had treed. Squaring off, pawing the mud with one enormous forefoot, he lowered his head, aimed that thick, stubby, pointed horn—and charged!
He caught the mammoth right below the knee, goring him deeply. With a scream of pain and fury, the hairy brute went down on all fours with a thump that shook the ground. Then, swinging its huge head from side to side, the mammoth caught the triceratops across one beefy shoulder with the point of his curlicue tusks, ripping open a longjagged gash between two plates of the reptile’s armor.
Honking furiously, the dinosaur backed off, snorting and pawing the mud, gathering his energies for another charge. The mammoth climbed to his feet again, slightly favoring his gored leg.
The two monsters charged at each other, and when they met it was like two armored tanks colliding. The impact was terrific, but neither monster seemed even slightly dazed. And in the next
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