A Good Day to Be a Mammal
A big day for small mammals.
65 million years ago
"I think this rain's just about finished," Drew said.
The speaker was a small mammal on a stout branch halfway up a tree. He was hunkered down under an umbrella of leaves, waiting for the last drops of rain to fall. The tree shrew was just over a foot in length from the end of his pointy muzzle to the tip of his bushy tail. His exposed fur was a reddish-brown that nicely matched the tree bark on which he huddled. He lifted himself onto his four stubby legs, exposing the lighter shade of his belly fur to the dim morning light.
"Let's get to worming before they all head back underground." Drew spoke to a smaller shrew crouched on the branch behind him.
"I don't know, Dad." Lou shared his father's dusky color, but was only three-quarters his size. "I saw Longtail hanging around down there earlier."
Lou saw the muscles in Drew's shoulders tense up. "I just don't understand why you keep naming the damned things."
"Giving them names makes them seem not quite as scary." Lou's whiskers quivered a little at his father's aggravation - this was not the first time they had this conversation. "They're not all the same, you know. This one happens to have a really long tail."
Drew glared over his shoulder, having to shift his tail to one side to focus clearly on his son. "Are you going to live in fear your whole life?"
"The key word is 'live'." Lou's head shifted from one side of the branch to the other as he carefully scanned the ground below them. "I'd rather be a living coward than a brave corpse."
Drew let out a long sigh. "Don't be such a wuss. You're a tree shrew, and that's a proud heritage to live up to." He broadly waved a forepaw towards his son. "Dinosaurs can't even talk, for goodness sake. If it weren't for them being so much bigger than us, we mammals would be kings around here. We've got all the brains, and they're nothing but big, dumb beasts."
"Yeah. Big, dumb beasts with sharp teeth and a taste for shrews." Lou mumbled as he continued to search the ground, hoping to see something that would keep them in the relative safety of the tree.
"Ah, you worry too much." With a dismissive flick of his paw, Drew turned his attention towards the tree, searching for an easy way down. "I told your mother that we'd bring home something to eat and that's just what we're gonna do. So, let's get a move on."
He scampered towards the trunk of the tree, jumped onto its damp, rough bark and easily clung to it with his head pointing earthward. His dark brown eyes targeted Lou, who had yet to move.
"C'mon, boy. It's the early shrew that gets the worm."
The still-frozen Lou watched as Drew raced straight down in one quick move for a few feet before pausing briefly to check his trajectory. Once his father reached the halfway point to the ground, Lou knew he could wait no longer. Being alone up high was as frightening to him as being in a group down low. That thought finally loosened his fearful inertia. He sped to the trunk and scuttled down, managing to reach ground level just after Drew.
They perched on one of the tree's exposed roots and peeked out from between the frilly fronds of a fern. Lou knew that his father only had eyes for where the best hunting would be, while the younger shrew simply wanted to avoid being hunted in return.
"It's a carpet of worms out there," Drew marveled in a low voice. "You gotta love the rain."
They faced a small clearing that opened in the otherwise densely packed forest. Dappled sunlight revealed islands of ferns and a few saplings scattered in a tiny sea of sparse grass. The ferns were short when compared to the surrounding trees, but they nonetheless towered over the vertically challenged shrews. Lou's sharp eyes bugged out as he sought potential threats, but even with that distraction he could easily spot dozens of large worms wriggling atop the dark, leafy soil.
He nearly jumped back onto the tree when Drew thumped a forepaw onto his back. "You gotta learn to lighten up, son. Could you at least blink your eyes for me? Mine are starting to dry out in sympathy."
Lou was oblivious to this attempt to unwind his nerves. "I'll blink after we get back home."
With a grimace and a shake of his head, Drew leapt out amongst the worms, landing on a spongy mat of decaying leaves to avoid getting bogged down in the mud. Lou willed himself to follow, but his legs refused to cooperate. He could only watch as the older shrew lunged forward and latched his jaws onto the end of a red worm as big around as his tail. Drew pulled with all his might, stretching out the gritty, glistening worm, but its other end remained fixed in the ground. After a moment of stalemate, all four of his paws scrambled for purchase in the wet leaves as the worm slowly contracted, dragging the shrew towards where it was stubbornly anchored.
Lou took in all the action from under a drooping fern leaf. He was about to shout some encouragement to his father when a foot appeared as if from nowhere. It was almost the size of an adult shrew, and was disturbingly reptilian. It sank a bit into the muck as it set down next to Drew, who single-mindedly continued to struggle with the worm.
Lou felt as if all the air had been pulled from his lungs. When he tried to call out a warning, only a small squeak escaped from him, but it seemed loud in the silence that had fallen over the area. Peering around the edge of his frond shelter, he found he had to crane his neck to see all of this new threat.
It was Longtail. The dinosaur was not much taller than the fern Lou hid under, but her wedge-shaped head towered above the diminutive shrews. To Lou's terrified eyes, she seemed the most gigantic thing he had ever seen. She stood on lanky hind legs, while her stubby arms dangled in front of her. Her back sloped down into a long, pointed tail that stretched out far behind her. Her dark green skin blended in well against the surrounding undergrowth, which was probably why they had not seen her earlier.
"D-D-Dad!" Lou's yell pierced the quiet.
"Whmph?" Drew mumbled around a mouthful of the still fighting worm.
"Run!"
Lou's voice drew Longtail's attention. She lowered her head to peer under the leaf that had been hiding him, meeting the shrew's trembling gaze with indifferent, pale-green eyes. Drew finally looked askance from his battle long enough to see the back of the dinosaur's head hovering only a body-length above his own. His mouth fell open and the worm popped loose, its body whipping down to the ground with a squelch.
A high-pitched squeal made both Lou and Longtail flinch. As the sound continued, they slowly turned to look at the gape-mouthed Drew, who stood still and screeched up at the dinosaur until his lungs were empty. After the scream died out, she narrowed her eyes and hissed down at him, her foul breath washing over the whole area.
That broke through Drew's initial terror. He leapt backwards, seeming almost to take flight, at the same moment that Longtail struck. Instead of a mouthful of shrew, she came away with a dripping wad of leafy mud. A shake of her head scattered the debris around the clearing and she took a deliberate step towards the frantically backpedaling shrew. That single, long-legged stride brought him almost within her reach again.
"Run, Dad, run!" Lou's feet danced on the root as he watched the action. "Serpentine!"
Drew apparently required no encouragement. He had already started on a zigzagging course around the clearing, trying to find sanctuary amongst the clumps of fern. Longtail's pace was slowed considerably by her greater weight pushing her feet deeper into the muck than Drew's, but her lengthy strides kept her right on his tail. Several times, her jaws snapped closed above him, once coming away with a few reddish-brown hairs clenched between her scaly lips.
Lou unconsciously continued his sympathetic running in place, letting out a horrified squeak at each snap of the dinosaur's jaws. It was clear to him that Drew was trying to circle back around to the tree where they had started. The problem was that his father would never get enough separation to make the climb to safety before he became breakfast.
Suddenly, Lou noticed that the fern leaf he huddled under was casting a second shadow, and the clearing was far more brightly lit than before. A quick glance upwards revealed that an object as intense as the sun was streaking across the sky above them. He instinctively closed his eyes at the sudden pain the light caused him. Even after he turned away from it, an afterimage of it glowed on the inside of his eyelids.
"What the hell was that?" From somewhere towards the middle of the clearing, Drew panted the words, winded from his exertions.
Lou blinked rapidly, wiping at his eyes with his forepaws until the white glow in the middle of his vision slowly faded. He could see his father gingerly stepping out from the midst of a cluster of ferns. Standing on the other side of those ferns, Longtail was also furiously blinking her eyes as she waved her stubby arms like a panicky swimmer.
"Did you see what it was?" Drew asked.
Longtail aimed her blank stare in the general direction of Drew's voice and she let out a nasally bark, but he seemed to be invisible to her. She continued to push her hands out in front of her as if trying to forge a path through thick brush on a moonless night.
"Yeah. It looked like a ball of fire flying overhead, and it was really bright." Lou's voice shook "What's wrong with her?"
"She must've burned out her eyes staring at whatever that thing was." Drew scampered towards his son, careful to take a circuitous route around the flailing dinosaur. "Can you see okay?"
"I'm fine. I closed my eyes as soon as I saw how bright it was. I guess she..."
The ground shook briefly with a resounding thump, feeling as if a nearby tree had fallen - a really big tree. Lou settled down to his belly, fearing another one of the earthquakes that periodically rumbled through the area. Drew stumbled a bit but rejoined his son without incident. Longtail staggered almost to the point of falling down, her arms flailing as she sought balance.
"Whoa," Lou whispered as he looked in the direction the fireball had flown.
Over the trees on the far side of the clearing, he could see dark clouds rushing towards them from a glowing horizon. Steaks of orange-red looped beneath the clouds, looking like flaming pterosaurs flying in every direction.
"I've never seen it raining fire from the sky." Lou could not contain his awe, an equal mix of wonder and terror.
"Well, this ought to shake things up around here. This lizard's not so terrible now, is she?" Drew shouted to the confused Longtail. "We'll feast on your entrails, dinosaur!"
Despite the dire circumstance, Lou could not hold his tongue. "Dad, we eat worms and insects, not lizard guts."
"It's a figure of speech, son," Drew sighed.
Lou narrowed his eyes at his father. "'Feast on your entrails' is a figure of speech?"
"I don't know." Even in the quickly fading light, he could see Drew rolling his eyes. "Maybe it's hyperbole then."
"It's hyper-something, all right," Lou muttered.
Both shrews looked skyward again. The scudding clouds were almost overhead and the streaks of red seemed to be arcing down towards the ground. A strong, hot wind had begun pushing through the trees, whipping them into each other.
"I bet it's that same volcano that blew last summer." Drew spoke matter-of-factly.
Lou frowned. "I think that was in the other direction, Dad. You know, towards the mountains? Plus, that didn't seem anywhere near as widespread as this looks to be."
"Oh, yeah."
"I'll tell you what, though. It's all coming from where that fireball was headed."
Drew grunted. "Well, that can't be good. Maybe we ought to get home till all this passes."
"I couldn't agree more." Lou had to shout to be heard over the wind. "I'd really like something stronger than a leaf overhead when that stuff starts coming down."
"You and me both." Drew nodded slowly with a glance towards Longtail. "Still, considering the sorry state old dumb-head's in over there, it's a good day to be a mammal, son."
After Drew scurried back towards the tree, Lou took a long, last look at the dinosaur, who had nearly vanished in the gathering gloom. Longtail had taken a couple of tentative steps in no particular direction, and her mouth occasionally opened as if she was calling, but the sound was lost amid the intensifying din. From her blank stare, he could tell she was still blind and had no idea of the terrible things headed her way. In spite of the fact that she had recently tried to make a meal of them, a twinge of sympathy for her flickered in his heart. Then he also turned towards the tree, leaving her to her fate.