The Dinosaur Keeper

Chapter 10

Before we carry on I feel I must apologize.

I have in no uncertain terms, every so often, led you up the preverbal garden path.

But now we must turn to matters of a serious and much more ferocious manner, and I’m afraid my jesting and occasional hoodwinking must cease.

But in one final attempt to thwart the more faint hearted of you, and by someway of relief, I feel I must explain our arch enemy somewhat.

Bob was bad.

I may add, the badness, to which would become a bad end, started in the beginning very, well, badly.

He, had grown up on the underside of Planet Chunk and, as we have already commented, this was a very unpleasant place indeed, dominated by the Nus and seldom to see the Sun.

Its bleak outlook was only matched by its cheerless appearance, which by all standards was very, very miserable indeed.

By and large the land there was neither firm nor liquid, with the occasional smattering of rock, surrounded by the boggiest of bogs, and the coldest water. The only redeeming feature appeared to be that although the water was cold, icily so, it was also the purest and sweetest that anyone could taste for miles around.

There were also an abundance of Dumdums, or Mudmuds as they were better known in these parts.

Make no mistake, the name change did nothing to alter their stupidity, they were still the silliest of all creatures, terrifyingly dim and with the same fatal attraction to fire. The only difference with these cousins of the sad pathetic creatures on the plains, was the ability to think.

Now a Dumdum, by this I mean your regular type, has the following thoughts:

-.

There what did you think of that.

Yes I see your point, it wasn’t very well explained at all, which is actually the main point in itself.

To conclude they have no thoughts.

They trot around trying to remember what they had forgotten before, whilst on the brink of remembering, forgetting again and started the whole process from scratch.

As I stated before, dim.

Now the Mudmuds could think, a little at least, say to the same extent that a fridge light is bright and a technical marvel or a bus is on time and regular.

Now you may think that this would bring the Mudmuds a little above that the Dumdums.

This is a common mistake, associating spuriously that the ability to think goes hand in hand with intelligence

Not so I’m afraid.

To put it into context for every great thought, there are at least a million bad ones, the ratio far outweighing the usefulness of thinking at all. But as you read, thinking about what you are reading, think about the thoughts that are really bad; war, famine, jealousy, cruelty and so on. Then think about their exact opposites, peace, healthy and nutritional diets, niceness, for example.

Now which do you read and hear about the most?

Exactly! Therefore concluding, beyond a shadow of a doubt that thinking isn’t always an attribute but more of a curse, as one persons thoughts are often another’s nightmare.

Anyway back to the thinking Mudmuds.

The thought process of Mudmud was similar to that of a Dumdum’s liking for all things hot.

The Dumdum involuntary compulsion was to rush towards anything flaming, realising too late that it was a bad idea, the only thought it had of any consequence before it died it was supposed.

The Mudmud’s thought process went like this:

’I can think.

What can I think about?

Not a lot here, bogs, boggier bogs, a little bit of firm land, water.

Ah water! I’ll think about that. Hold on I can’t think about water without experiencing it, better jump in. Blimey its cold!

Can I swim? What’s swimming?’.

So as you can see the ability to think, didn’t necessarily go with the ability to think things through.

So the Mudmuds were different in so much as that they still had a fondness for fire, but also for ice cold drowning as well.

Which basically meant that any inhabitant, that made their home gingerly on the odd bit of solid land here and there, could enjoy a hot meal, or a frozen one on a stick.

Normally, whilst an inhabitant on this gloomy side of Chunk ate either a hot or cold meal, they would wonder if the bit of solid ground they were on really was that secure. Eventually convincing themselves that it was slowly sinking into the bog and moving on to somewhere else.

This nomadic lifestyle mattered not one jot, as the land had plenty of Mudmuds everywhere and enough fresh water to quench the most parched throat in the land. So if you could put up with dismally gloomy half light all year round, the inability to stay in one place too long and the constant cold weather it wasn’t that bad a place to live.

Anyway we digress, all this is fact and can be looked up in any copy of the Dinosaur Manual, apart from edition one, which foolhardily decided it was not worth mentioning the lower side, giving it a lovely sense of mystery, which would eventually only lead to disappointment.

Bob on the other hand was a much more baffling creature.

He was bad, as previously mentioned, but maybe this badness wasn’t entirely his fault.

You see the beginning for Bob, just like the Creation of Chunk itself was a bit of a damp squib, if you’ll pardon the expression.

It wasn’t that when he entered this world nobody noticed, the exact opposite if anything, but he was raised by parents that didn’t really know what they were doing.

They were young you see, mere children themselves, and muddled through as best they could. They would attempt parenting by doing a bit of this and then a bit of that, until eventually the this and the that sort of merged and became one horrible mess.

This isn’t as terrible as it sounds in all honesty, as even the oldest and most seasoned parent hasn’t got a clue when it boiled down to it.

Shocking isn’t it.

There you sit quite content that you’ve turned out to be a pretty good egg, convinced that it was down to good parenting and the values that were instilled into you when you were a child. The gentle persuasion of a parent, the cooing by them of a deed well done, and the mild scorn when you were slightly naughty, which occasionally made you run to your bedroom, ashamed that you had done something that might diminish their love for you by even the tiniest fraction.

They of course attained all this moral fibre from their parents who, you are frequently reminded, were much more strict and not the liberal people you were lucky enough to end up with.

Oh no, when they were kids, they slept on a bed of nails, if they were lucky enough to sleep at all, and only ate every other day a meal of sawdust and belly button fluff, if they had somehow managed to find an extra penny behind the back of sofa and buy such luxuries. Not that they had a sofa of course, goodness no, they were far to poor for that. They only ever bought furniture when the bailiffs were coming round, and therefore needed something to give them, so not to bring shame on to their already miserable lives.

And so on and so forth, you’ll have heard it a thousand times before yourself.

The crux of the matter is, everybody learns from everybody else. Raising a child and teaching them what you know, is as much an experience for the tutor as it is for the pupil.

Bob was no exception.

However, lets not get all down trodden about it.

Your parents are wonderful people, I’m sure, and some of those long lectures and punishments will have steered you in the right direction every now and then, but a wonderful person is not by definition a great teacher.

This was none more true than in Bob’s parents.

First of all, when approaching their serious Job of parenting they gave Bob everything he could desire. This in turn meant that he wanted for nothing, and therefore everything he did receive was never quite up to scratch. When he yearned for the coldest of Mudmuds, his father would selflessly plunge himself right to the bottom of the deepest lake. But Bob would still be convinced that there was colder one somewhere else and that his Dad mustn’t of tried quite hard enough, and should have spent more time looking for a deeper, darker lake that was perhaps a little further than he could be bothered to go.

If they took an interest in any activities that Bob was doing, needlessly terrifying as many Mudmuds as he could for instance, they would be ‘cramping his style’.

But if they left him alone, to do whatever he liked, they were deemed to ‘never be supportive’.

This only led to confusion, until eventually for example, he would demand to stay up so late he was in danger of running into himself waking up the next morning.

Eventually after long conversations between themselves, that had to be fitted in when Bob finally fell asleep exhausted by his brutal pursuit of Mudmud chasing, Bob’s parents decided that if giving him everything was essentially very, very bad then giving him nothing must be conversely very, very good.

So they promptly threw Bob out of the family home to fend for himself.

Again proving that the ability to think, was not necessarily the gift it may appear.

Of course upon giving Bob nothing, they had actually given him everything he had ever wanted, the freedom to do exactly as he liked.

To start off with everything was fine, he ran around chasing Mudmuds to his heart’s content and went on a quest to find the coldest one at the bottom of the most perilous lake.

This was all well and good, good and well for a few months until, well, until Bob got bored.

He realised that chasing the Mudmuds was futile, too easy a task and so eventually gave up. It also became apparent that a frozen Mudmud was a frozen Mudmud and even if he found the coldest one in the whole of Chunk, it would still taste the same, stick to his tongue the same, and eventually defrost the same, as they all did.

He was also getting a bit tired of sleeping rough, and thought he really should try and make a home for himself.

At least this last notion gave him some kind of task to accomplish and stopped the boredom from decimating his life.

The first attempt at domesticity, of course, was a disaster.

You see, all the other inhabitants suffered from paranoia, thinking that their bit of land was sinking into the bogs, which of course they weren’t.

Bob, on the other hand, made the mistake of building his home on the only bit rock on the whole of the underside of Chunk that actually was sinking.

So after making himself comfy, or as comfortable as possible on a bed made out of fencing posts and hawthorn bushes he had churlishly chosen, he eventually managed to have a quiet snooze. With one of the posts lodged between his ribs, Bob awoke to find himself half-drowned in sludge.

Having quickly leapt onto another piece of grass, which unfortunately turned out to be a thinly disguised bog, he consequently found himself neck deep in brown, sticky, earth water cordial.

Somehow managing to crawl up the side of the pit, cursing his parents all the way and eventually securing himself on solid ground, Bob rested for a moment to review his current circumstances.

He was presently standing on a strip of land that was only about two metres in diameter and right now was homeless, hungry and thoroughly dejected.

So he decided, still hating everything about his parents abandonment that was now fresh in his mind, to find somewhere better to live.

He walked for quite sometime.

I say walk, but of course mean hop, as this is all you can do on the underside of Chunk, when marshes and bogs seldom give way to actual land.

It was a good few months of hoping from solid rock to solid rock, before Bob found anything he deemed suitable to call home. He was however lucky, or unlucky enough depending on your perspective, to live on the largest of the islands on the bottom of Chunk. This meant he went by many an interesting place which could be potential residences, which were dismissed for more and more ludicrous reasons.

The steaming pits of Chunker were deemed unsuitable as, although they had the most amount of land round the edge of them as anywhere else in Chunk and where certainly the warmest, the constant gushing of the geysers would keep him awake a night. These hot muddy springs where situated right at the bottom of Mount Chunk, which was rejected just as fast as a potential homestead. Bob decided that, it would be too much of a stretch to have to climb down the side of it every morning, if he fancied a quick Mudmud snack, and although the caves would make excellent shelter, the wind was more fierce there and the blowing would hurt his delicate nose. He also decided that he didn’t want to live anywhere where Christmas lived for the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year.

Oh yes make no mistake about it, Bob was correct in his findings. You see where you and I live there are always seasons, unless you are one of the poor unfortunate people that live in Los Angeles. Now we have established, be it some time ago, that Chunk has not. Where we wait for the weather to change, gradually getting colder and colder until we can surmise its winter, or warmer and warmer until the full extent of summer, Chunk does not. Therefore Christmas, surely the best indicator of the middle of winter, needed somewhere to rest on planet Chunk until it was called into being for its yearly appearance. Mount Chunk was the best place, as it could squeeze itself between the peaks and take shelter in the many caves. This of course meant that Mount Chunk was, for all but one day in the year, the coldest and snowiest place on the Planet, where few went unless absolutely necessary.

This information of course helps Bob not one iota, and he was just on the brink of giving up and wondering if he should go back to his parents, promise to be good and live a quiet, boring life.

Having recently passed a whole wood of Total Fruit Tree’s, which he considered unsuitable accommodation as he wasn’t really a fruit kind of a chap, he came across a little community of Stegosaurus’, merrily grazing on what looked like over an acre of freshly grown grass.

Upon sighting the animals, Bob was shocked at how many there were, having not seen another creature in weeks.

This alarm, he then realised, must have looked quite terrifying to the Stegosaurus’, because as well as the startled look on his face he had also omitted a troubled roar and stooped low to the ground, leaning forward, just as a reflex you understand.

This roar scattered the herd instantly, again much to the surprise of Bob.

He stood there silent for a good ten minutes, a little confused, with a feeling he didn’t really recognise resonating at the bottom of his stomach. He had seen this reaction before, with the Mudmuds, but never on anything else.

He had presumed that the Mudmuds were easy to scare as they were so small and to be honest not the brightest of creatures. He also thought that in all truthfulness they knew they were there just to make up the staple diet of everything else.

But Stegosaurus’ were much bigger, almost half his size, and he had never dared to try and frighten them before. But then his stomach started to buzz again at the mere thought, and filled with something that felt like the warmest, stickiest honey in the known universe.

He had discovered something truly wonderful.

Thinking back to his days of running around the swamps after Mudmuds in his youth, he had been smaller then, but now recalled that any other creature did back off slightly when he was around.

Assuming that they were moving out of the way as he chased the unfortunate creatures, Bob had to concur that he was wrong, remembering the look in their eyes as the honey in his stomach swelled even more.

He was bigger now, four times the size of that of the young Bob and the months of walking had made him lean and toned. The very muscles on his body rippled though his scaly skin, only sustained by his razor sharp claws and even more deadly teeth.

He wasn’t sure if he could actually catch a Stegosaurus, even the honey in his stomach turned sickly at the very thought, but he could certainly use their uncertainty to his advantage.

This was something Bob could and would become addicted to.

Fear.

As quick as a flash he grabbed a few saplings and stacked them neatly under the cover of four trees in the corner of his new field. He covered these with a couple of the softest palm leaves he could find and sat on top of this pile, relishing the cover from the rain that the branches gave.

Bob surveyed his new lair and congratulated himself on the wise choice.

However he had stumbled along a new game that would become his life’s work, terrifying everything he ever came into contact with.

He had also bagged himself a rather nice field as well, which was a bonus.

Not everything was fun and games, but after several years he began to master the art of bed making and fire lighting, allowing fantastic sleeping and the ability to eat as much as he liked with little effort, swearing he would never eat a frozen Mudmud again.

But still, as certain as satisfaction is never quite enough, Bob yearned for the unknown.

The Stegosaurus’ never returned to the field again, not since the fateful day that Bob had claimed it as his own. Which meant he had to go out and look for them, before he could start chasing them endlessly around another patch of ground. It was quite exhausting to find them to start of with and on first contact he had made a few errors.

It wasn’t until months of fruitless searching that he noticed the first problem he had. Having spent the whole of the day tramping around getting more and more annoyed at not seeing another living sole, Bob had got quite angry and decided to take it out on a young tree that had been vibrating next to him in a way he didn’t like. Feeling slightly better he decided to go home, have a sleep and eat a few Mudmuds, which had wandered into his fire the night before. Walking back, as quiet as a mouse, if that mouse had a loudhailer, large concrete encased boots and weighed approximately four tons, he noticed that all the trees he passed vibrated in a way he didn’t like

Which is when it struck him.

The next day he set off bright and early to a place he was certain the Stegosaurus’ must frequent. He had noticed chewed bushes and gnawed branches and couldn’t think of anything but them that would have done this. At about two miles away from the place he was sure they grazed, he suddenly made a sharp left and ran in a semi-circle for another two miles. Stopping for a few minutes, to catch his breath, he then did something quite peculiar that he wasn’t certain he would be able to do.

Arching his back and pushing his knees forward, Bob edged himself up on to the balls of his feet.

Balancing precariously for a few seconds, he turned right and gingerly took a massive silent stride.

More than happy with this result he took another step, and another, and another, gradually increasing his speed ever so slightly, but nonetheless tiptoeing his way forward.

An hour or so of this and he was behind a tree, looking out onto the field he had been to yesterday.

There in front of him was the herd of Stegosaurus’, quite happily grazing away.

Bob was tired now, and his legs ached from the new position he had found himself in for the past afternoon, every so quietly he lowered himself down onto his feet, relief passing through his body as it welcomed its old posture back.

Going promptly to sleep, Bob dozed until early evening and

upon waking up had to quickly remember where he was, before he let out a silent yawn and clicked the sleep carefully out of every bone.

Deciding to gently rub his arms and legs he looked straight in front of him. There they were grazing away, softly chewing the grass in front of them, occasionally slurping from one of the many bogs that peppered the field.

Looking down, he noticed a juvenile Stegosaurus excitedly chomping through a bush stuffed full of lilac berries.

This Bob could not resist, and gently lowered his head down.

It was a few seconds later, as the young Stegosaurus reached a little further to get the plumper berries, feeling slightly woozy from the intoxicating juice but fortunately not having consumed so much to pass out, that their eyes met.

The Stegosaurus froze in fear, not quite understanding what he was seeing, before gradually focussing less on the eyeball in front of him, and slowly taking in the massive head and presumably even greater body.

Bob then decided to raise one of his claws, tense all the muscles in his body and show off the full compliment of his teeth.

He let out a little menacing gurgle at the back of his throat before casually saying,

“Hello there!”.

The fear swelled in the poor Stegosaurus and fortunately nature rid the animal of the toxic berries through a combination of panic and bodily functions, to which Bob felt, of rather smelt, slightly perturbed.

It was enough though and the Stegosaurus’ chubby little legs carried it as fast as possible back toward the herd, bellowing loudly as it went.

Bob took his time, he was not an animal to rush, checking his claws and getting that annoying bit of Mudmud from between his teeth. With a sigh he looked up and saw the pack in front of him, seemingly in disbelief at the news the young Stegosaurus was carrying. With this Bob decided it was time to make his grand entrance, and burst through the trees, roaring loudly as he went.

They scattered either side of him and Bob quickly darted to the right, craning his great neck, before dropping it level with his hind legs, increasing his speed.

He headed straight for the right hand side pack and split them into a further two. On one side they were doubling back, almost right passed him toward the forest, the others toward the boggy marsh, a couple screaming as they fell in. He chased the ones heading toward the forest and split them in two again, three Stegosaurus’ left running back toward the marshes.

Which is when it happened.

Three, as Bob had noticed with his parents, is a tragic number. Two will keep pace with each other, but three will always leave one behind, which is exactly what occurred now. He spotted the candidate straight away and leapt toward her.

She panicked and headed towards the marshes close by, some twenty or so metres ahead of Bob.

But Bob was much, much faster and they both knew it.

Gaining on her rapidly, she was fifteen metres away, then ten and then five. He could smell the fear in her sweat, and the honey in his stomach exploded like a volcano, hot breath scorching her flanks and she couldn’t suppress a squeal of fear as her legs buckled beneath her. Then she slid down to the ground, her weight pushing her along a few metres until she dropped down the bank into a muddy bog, frantically treading water.

Bob sniffed at her for a bit, as she gulped and choked on the turgid water.

Having seen enough and certainly not prepared to ruin his fine green skin with globules of mud and sludge, Bob turned away. The fear was there and the honey was satisfied, he would go home to rest and eat a good meal of yesterday’s Mudmuds.

Leaving was, unfortunately, his fatal error.

The Stegosaurus’ didn’t know if he would kill them or not, even Bob, youth still feeding his naivety was unsure of this. But they did know he wouldn’t go into a bog, not voluntarily anyway, and this would be their saviour.

Bob still took great pleasure in chasing the Stegosaurus’, enjoying the event and planning the stalking them on tiptoe, before eventually screaming loudly and running round a field after them. He didn’t know if he wanted the ultimate thrill of death, the honey certainly seemed to say not, but was certain that the adrenaline of the hunt was intoxicating.

As time passed, the Stegosaurus’ saviour became more and more apparent. Eventually they gave up with the lush grass in the centre of what land they could find and stuck to the coarser, more muddied stalks nearer the marshes. So when Bob burst through any kind of foliage, and made his grand entrance, preening himself as he went, they simply jumped sideways into a bog, before Bob got into any king of stride.

Walking home, head low, his honeyless stomach would lurch on a single bite of Mudmud at supper.

To be fair it had been a gradual move by the Stegosaurus’, which meant that Bob had honed his tiptoeing skills and ensured he was closer to the herd before leaping out to frighten them, but now the hours of preparation seemed pointless.

The tiptoeing had also meant he could sneak up on other creatures, a dozing Pterodon or a Velociraptor with their back turned. But upon omitting his mighty roar the Pterodon would simply fly a hundred feet into the air, or the Velociraptor would run away at speeds that Bob couldn’t even fathom. One had even turned round startled and accidentally cut his chin, which was a shock for Bob, as he bled for hours convinced that he was going to die. So eventually he gave up with them and was forced into early retirement with the Stegosaurus’.

It was about this time that Bob’s father turned up.

The bored Tyrannosaurus had been dozing for a while when his Dad had just sort of appeared. The junior Tyrannosaurus couldn’t help but notice that his father looked a lot older than he remembered and slightly more frail.

This wasn’t the most shocking thing though, Bob’s father had come to tell him that he and his mother had split up and that he was going to go far, far away.

Bob’s mum, it had turned out, had decided that without a youngster around the place they had little in common and had gone off with another Tyrannosaurus half her age, whose skin was a brighter green and claws had a shinier appearance.

Although having not seen Bob for many years, his father felt compelled to say goodbye, if only to see his son one last time.

Bob’s stomach turned and nothing sweet and sickly abated his rage. Seeing his fathers frailty, he decided to leap at him jaws stretched as wide as they could go.

But Bob had mistaken his fathers sense of loss for an imagined weakness and had not counted on the response. With one kick of his leg the senior Tyrannosaurus had sent Bob flying across the field, for Bob was older now but still not fully grown or wise to the way of the world.

Whimpering slightly in a corner, convinced he had broken his leg, or at the very least lost a toe, he watched his father approach timidly again, a slight trace of concern, before turning and walking away, just to the left side of Mount Chunk.

The visit made Bob miserable and he cursed his own existence. There was no sport left that didn’t outsmart him by leaping into the bogs.

Mudmuds bored him and the only other contact with another creature in months, his own father, had left him bruised and battered, his ego suffering the most.

Which is when it struck him, if his father was leaving, for far, far away as he put it, then why couldn’t he?

One thing that Bob had noticed was that there was always exact opposites. There was water for the ground, heat from the cold and happiness, from what he could remember, for the sad.

Before he knew it he was running as fast as he could the way his father had gone, not wanting to catch up with him again, days had passed since he had left and there was no hope of that, but he did want the same adventure and this was the only way he knew to begin.

Keeping the pace and passing the base of the Mount Chunk, his heart begged to slow down, but his mind was set and the faster he got to far, far away the better. Bob jettisoned through the bogs almost walking on top of their sludgy offerings, until eventually it was in front of him.

The ocean.

The only problem with most of Chunk is that it is divided into islands. Walk anywhere for a couple of days, even if somebody plonked you right in the centre of the land, and eventually you will come across the coast. Except of course if you walk round in a complete circle and then you would end up where you started.

But the people that do this are complete idiots.

Unless you came from the island just to west of where Bob began, whose inhabitants were cursed with one leg being shorter than the other and therefore could not help but walk in circles, although standing on hillsides was made a lot easier.

The other problem with Island dwellers, is that they can see other islands from their coastline, which they presume will be much better places to live.

This was how Bob now found himself now.

He stood staring at the sea, exhausted yet elated to feel the sand between his toes and the salt air in his nostrils.

A second later and he was in the water, right up to his neck, paddling to start before a kick of his mighty legs propelled him briskly forward. Having mastered swimming on his quest for the coldest Mudmud some years ago, the movement returned to him quickly.

Bob hadn’t seen an island that he liked the look of, but had spotted a crease on the horizon that intrigued him greatly.

It was perfectly straight, as if somebody had drawn a boundary neatly with a ruler.

The crease was some way away and many hours were consumed before he was anywhere near it.

Then suddenly, it was within reach and Bob treaded water for a while confused, scared and fascinated all at once.

Currently upright in the water, it was a hazy, badly lit day, like it always was on the underside of Chunk.

Yet by the crease, or rather on the other side, it was glowing brightly with yellow sunlight and everything looked the wrong way up, set at forty-five degrees.

Unknown to Bob he had reached one of the edges of Chunk.

He was currently at the bottom of the planet, peering at what would often be referred to as the more fashionable west side.

This was patently ridiculous as being on the side a revolving cube meant you inhabited as much of the west as you did the east, depending on whether it was day or night.

Fear overtook all his other sensations and Bob thought about turning back.

That was until he saw a Mudmud merrily swimming on the other side basking in the Sun. How it had got there, Bob didn’t know, but without thinking he kicked one of his legs and with a mighty push hurtled toward the edge of Chunk.

Then bang! He hit an invisible wall and was stunned into silence, unsure of what to do.

Then the tip of his claw broke through the other side, gravity pulling it the wrong way.

Panic spread across every inch of his body, before the right side of his foot was completely sucked in, suspended there for a good few minutes until one half of him was on the west and the other at the bottom of chunk. Gravity was pulling him both ways and Bob was convinced he would be torn in two.

Then with a great squelch he founding himself dipping up and down in the sea, but now basking in the afternoon Sun, a feeling never experienced before.

The Mudmud had disappeared and with some fear Bob realised he could not see land, the Sea perfectly flat but nothing green presenting itself.

Frantically Bob thrashed about in the ocean, convinced he was going to drown, until his thrashing twisted him round one quarter turn.

Someway in the distance, just to the right of him, he spotted the Mudmud again, happily plodding along toward something Bob couldn’t quite make out.

Without any thought at all the might Tyrannosaurus kicked off and was soon gaining on the unfortunate creature.

It wasn’t long before he was right on the Mudmud, which was when he noticed that it had stopped swimming altogether and was simply floating there without a care in the world.

It spotted Bob and panicked of course, fear in it’s eyes, but remained still as if for a purpose.

Bob decided to do the same, much to the relief of the Mudmud.

There was a terrific bang and as quick as a flash brilliant sunlight turned to hazy dusk.

Bob had never experienced this before, living so close to the axis, the turning of Chunk never really bothered anyone and terror returned to his veins.

Then he heard a slow rumbling and looked behind him.

If he was frightened before he was petrified now.

As Chunk had turned from day to dusk so it had created the biggest wave Bob had ever seen.

To be fair Bob hadn’t seen any waves before today, but he was still convinced this was unusually large.

He frantically turned his gaze back to the Mudmud, whose fear had subsided and was currently looking far too relaxed, lying on his back with arms crossed against a calm chest.

Bob didn’t know what to do and so copied the action, the Mudmud nodding with approval.

A minute passed, then two, and the noise greatened, piercing his ears, convincing Bob his head would split in two, until suddenly it was upon them.

Both Bob and the Mudmud were launched onto the crest of a wave at least a mile high, being pushed terrifyingly fast forward.

The Mudmud let out a rapturous “wee!”, but Bob could only manage a terrified scream.

It was at this moment, as he hysterically looked to his left and then right, that he noticed the wave was covered in Mudmuds all letting out little squeals of excitement.

Bob promptly decided to stop screaming, for fear of being branded a big sissy, and looked in front of him.

Land.

Hurtling toward him, faster than he would have liked, was the golden shoreline of a large island.

Again Bob began to scream until he realised he quite liked the view.

He couldn’t make out much, through the hazy dusk light, but he did spot something immediately, Diplodocus’.

There were none on the underside of Chunk, where Bob lived, but in the few sentences that his father had said to him, he had talked of Diplodocus, as if it were some mystical, fabled animal. Bobs father, had explained, that none lived on the underside as there wasn’t enough dry land on which for them to stand. He had also said that where there were Diplodocus’ , there was surely the largest amount of dry land you could ever come across.

One last comment was made by the errant parent, where there were Diplodocus’, there were also Stegosaurus’.

Sport thought Bob, and he willed the beach to come to him faster.

The wave started to lower and the noise subsided, the beach being but a couple of miles away. Then suddenly it dropped, making Bob scream again for the umpteenth time that day.

Roughly, the last ounce of effort from the wave deposited him on dry land, welcoming him with a mouth full of sand.

Coughing and spluttering, Bob stood up and watched the Mudmuds run away.

It was funny, he thought, but he couldn’t help but feel like he had thought the wrong thing, as if his fellow surfers were slightly different now on dry land.

It was then that he noticed that even in the dusk light everything here was a bit brighter, a bit newer, a bit more exciting.

Traipsing through the nearby undergrowth, he broke through the other side and put his first foot onto dry scrubland.

Sniffing the fresh air, Bob was pleased not to see any marshes or bogs.

He looked a little further into the distance and saw a row of trees that had assembled themselves into a forest, and a little further still the great necks of several Diplodocus’.

Ah, thought Bob, the great plains of Chunk, and made his way slowly toward them.

******

All of this of course, and by this I mean Bob and his arrival, not the underside of Chunk itself which truly was as described a miserable and unpleasant place, is as true as it is false.

Because nobody knows much at all about Bob.

Well the real truth and not the false text you may or may not have just read, is that maybe somebody did know the facts and not the falsehood of Bob, but they certainly were not telling, not now anyway.

You see all these facts, nonsense and a good deal more, presently raced through Rex’s mind as he and Pooetesleap dashed toward the house as fast as their legs could carry them.