I can hear the sound of guns and the great squalls of noise
from the flying creatures. It is Glen
Applebee and his men shooting archeopteryx again.
They’ve had the place to themselves for long enough. It was
only a generation or two ago that we realised that the archeopteryx were
dinosaurs and that they’d been on this earth for a hundred and fifty million
years. It’s time for mankind to make a
stand. We’re the up and coming species
let them move aside. That’s what Glen
Applebee says, anyway.
The taking of the child earlier this year was the
catalyst. We took them for granted. They lived on the cliffs and on the foreshore
feeding off pleisiosaurs and ichtyosaurs from the deep. Let them, we thought. They do no harm to us. But they took up a huge amount of real
estate. As do all dinos. They’re all big. Big and lumbering. So Glen Applebee and people like him have
cleared most of the countryside of the big thumping brutes and we can live
without the fear of being stamped on.
Not that they ever did stamp on us.
Well, except for that time a herd of alosaurs ran wild one night and
crushed those old folk in their beds. Somewhere. Not near here. Somewhere Glen Applebee heard about, though. That
was enough. It had to stop. I mean you can’t live like that. Can’t make a living. So Glen Applebee and his
men got to work and we have a better life all round. It was funny how quiet it all became. Without their singing.
And then there was the child. I mean, I might not have bothered about the
archeopteryx had it not been for that baby.
That shouldn’t happen.
It shouldn’t take Glen Applebee and his men long to clear
the cliffs and when it’s done he’s promised he’ll build some fancy houses and
apartments up there. The sort that’ll
raise the profile of the place. Make us
all feel proud. Proud that somebody
wants to come and live here at last without being disturbed by that constant,
hideous noise.
It’s funny I do sometimes miss that high whinnying sound the
big dinos made. I always though it was a
kind of singing. Sweet and melodious. I used to walk out into the forest and just
sit and listen to that sound coming in on the evening air. Now they’re all gone and i’ll never hear
them again.
I wonder if I’ll ever miss the archeopteryx sound, that
mournful wail that echoes round the cliffs every morning and evening with a
sort of melancholy as if they were being nostalgic for all those millions of
years that have passed by whilst they’ve been sitting there on all this prime
real estate. They were wailing for the
lost youth of the species. An old, old
family who knows its time is over.
Anyway, I can hear the guns and it’ll be nice and
quiet. And then Glen Applebee says he’s
got a plan to get rid of those ichtyosaurs and pleisiosaurs that roll quietly
in the waves of the bay before they plunge down into that blue deep, unknown
sea. And those people in the cliff
apartments will be able to swim undisturbed.
