Creature Short Story

Dilo Daze

By Joseph Fether

She was a Dilophosaurus, longer, taller, and heavier than one normally thinks. She knew quite well her dimensions, as she was living in them. She didn’t know her surrounding, though. Waking from a long sleep the environment changed. The thick humid forest she knew was turned into a long sandy beach. She stood, only to realize she was still dazed with some new injuries. She thought nothing much of it, not remembering the fight she had stumbled into before being knocked unconscious. As she walked along the beach the sore muscles began to loosen up and eventually return to full strength. Hungry and confused, she quickened her pace to find food. She noticed the rotting corpse of a larger dino’s prey. She knew it wouldn’t be much, but it might just last her until her next meal. She had to scavenge. She didn’t have a pack to hunt with, and lacked features to take on equal sized prey on her own.

Having eaten the corpse, now simply a pile of bone with little flesh attached, she moved on. Still hungry she continued to look for more meaty prey. She knew that if she was to satisfy her hunger she would need to hunt and kill something living. Something relatively large, but a complete small creature would do. She jogged along, trying to conserve energy but still be quick. Up ahead she saw something coming out of the foliage. She went into the bushes and stopped as to not be seen. Examining it for a bit, she realized it was a heterodontosaurus. It was small enough to hunt individually and would prove to be not much of a challenge. Sneaking up to it, she prepared to sprint in for the kill, only to be surprised by another dilophosaurus with similar intentions. Seeing the other miss, she intercepted the heterodontosaurus fleeing in her direction.

Fresh meat tasted good to her, having barely eaten. The other dilo walked up, seeming to also be recovering from a similar confusion and hunger that she woke up with. She began to think that this dilo might have been a part of her pack, injured from the same event, and decided to stick around the other dilo to hunt with. Instinctively she though, “Strength in numbers.” It made sense. One must be very skilled and strong to take down two or more creatures of similar size. Being a part of that two or more seemed like a fruitful idea. The two of them continued to hunt until their hunger was satisfied, but still lingered the confusion of having the environment they once knew being lost. Exploring more inland, temperatures rose. The trees created a barrier for the moist air, and the moisture held in the heat. They felt more natural in this environment, more at home. They made noises to each other, as if engaging in conversation, and signaled when something was near.

Canoes!

Today we went to Bell Brook Canoe. Before we left we watched a TED talk about listening, and trying to identify the different types of noises you can hear. We also  Keeping this in mind we were to try and do this and see what we can hear at some point when we are canoeing. When we got there we found that the owners of the place we were canoeing weren't there to take us to the top of the river, so we had to wait around for a bit first. Once they got here we took another bus up to the top with the canoes. Once we had our canoes we went in one at a time. When I got in I felt a lot less stable than I did in the kayaks. It felt a lot easier to fall out of it. After a while though I got used to it. We stopped a few minutes after we were in the water to listen to our surroundings. We heard a couple different bird songs, paddles splashing in the distance, and the flow of the river. At one point there was a rope, where everyone stopped to swing from into the river. Despite the water being stupid cold, I wound up doing it anyway. When I finally dropped in I found it hard to breathe it was so cold. As I was in it I got used to it though. It wasn't the most pleasant thing, but it was still a lot of fun. I had accidentally left my watch in another person's canoe, so for the rest of the trip I didn't know what time it was. A decent few times, maybe six or seven, we got stuck in our canoes when the water got shallow. The depth of the water varied a lot. Some areas beached us while others we couldn't even find the floor with our paddles. A couple times we couldn't steer out of the way of a low hanging branch and we got a little scratched up by that. We also saw a about five turtles along the way back. Eventually at around 1:15 we arrived back where we started and ate our lunches. We didn't have much longer to eat though, since our bus was leaving at 1:30. When we got back on the bus we came there in I went ahead and wrote my recipe poem about the river, and below is what I wrote.

To make a river,

First take a layer of mud and carve a groove in it

Then add tons of cold muddy water

And mix it with rocks until the floor is bumpy

Then line the edges with trees and other plants

And add bird songs to the mix

Next add turtles, geese, fish, and various insects

Let it sit for a while and you will have a river

Optionally you can add canoes and people

Then you will have an adventure.

Me just before I land in the water

Vignettes

Today we did some practice creating vignettes, a type of writing where you are limited to 800 words maximum but no minimum. They can come in a range of forms, such as poems, monologues, narratives, reflections, etc.. What they are is a brief description of a setting or scene. Good vignettes usually evoke emotions and use all of the senses. From experience I can say that it is much easier to make one when you yourself have some sort of an attachment to the subject of the vignette. Being shown something and asked to make a vignette for it won’t result in the most emotional or interesting writing. You can see this in my practice vignette of a picture of a bear in a forest with mountains:

The great bear stood on the rocks in the river, the massive snowy mountains behind him and the tall trees here and there. Directly to the left of the bear is a bush, now empty of its berries and surrounding it are colorful yellow and orange flowers. He quickly turns to a sound from his right and begins to walk slowly over to it, avoiding the white waters below him crashing against the rocks he steps on. The sound he heard was a fish, splashing out and in the water. He stopped at the spot he heard the fish and waited, staring intensely at the water to see the fish. After a moment he lunges in, coming out with a fish in his mouth, successful at last.

After the practice we began working on our actual vignettes, which we would use a picture of a creature that we got from Cox Arboretum. I found it a lot easier to write this vignette since I had a more personal connection with it. I found that descriptions came to me easier and I even wound up making it into a sort of poem, rather than a narrative like I usually do. Below is the picture I based the vignette on and the vignette itself to follow it.

Peace Among Us

Sitting by the small tree, accompanied by ducks

Some geese swim up to us.

Silent and calm they near

I stay still and do not fear

They walk past without aggression

And sit by the tree to begin their grooming session

They’re so close I can see their textures

They seem so soft with their array of feathers

People walk by amazed by the sight

Of me sitting almost in arms reach of geese without a fight

As time passes by, a gosling opens its floodgate

Shortly after the smell starts to accumulate

When I get up to leave there is no reaction

And walk to get lunch and take a break from the action.

Kayaking!

Today we started off with a short reading of an excerpt from “The Ponds” in Henry David Thereau’s Walden. We took note of the kinds of observations he made, the meanings or connections he made from those observations, and his reflection on it. After that we went over to Eastwood Metro park for Kayaking and hiking. We were split into two groups, one would kayak while the other hiked. My group kayaked first. Since me and another student were taller than the rest in our group we got to use larger kayaks. The one I used was only slightly differently colored from the water near the land where plenty of trees and grass were. It was sort of a very dark green but slightly watered down. The rest of the water in the middle was more of a muddy brown colored. When I got in the water with the kayak it felt pretty stable. I didn’t feel like it would be easy to flip over unless I tried to or turned a little too hard. I felt like I had control over the movements of the kayak, like I feel in control when I am riding a large tricycle. At one point I did turn a little too hard, but I caught myself before much water at all got in and didn’t get to taste the water and whatever else might have been in it. Most of the water that did get into the kayak was from moving the paddles across my body and other paddles. Even though it was only a little water that got in I was still quite cold from it, but it wasn’t unbearable. The water was too muddy to see how deep the lake was. Some of the only indications of how deep the water might be were the branches and logs that were in the water sitting on the mud and large enough to peep up out of the water. There were also a lot of geese around so we had to avoid them a bit. Occasionally they would make noises, but otherwise it was just the sound of a couple bird songs, paddles splashing in the water, and conversation between people as we went along. The smell wasn’t as pleasant, though. A lot of geese had come through before we got there and they really had to go to the bathroom. Not the worst thing I ever smelled, but it wasn’t the best by a long shot. 

Us sitting in our kayaks in the lake

Backpacking

Today we looked at some more authors and people who have exposed themselves to the wilderness, but more so than the previous authors we discussed. This time we looked at backpacking, which is like hiking but to a much more extreme level. When backpacking you expect to be traveling for weeks or months, covering hundreds of miles. To understand the level of preparation needed for this kind of journey we looked at one author, Cheryl Strayed, and what she needed to in order to make her journey along a portion of the  Pacific Crest Trail. She wasn’t an experienced backpacker, though, and packed more than she probably should have, and some unnecessary things. Her backpack ended up being so huge and heavy she nicknamed it “monster.” Later on after learning about this author we did research on items we think we would need and feel how heavy it would be by putting weights in an example backpack that you might use. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish getting all the weights of my items before the end of the time we were doing the activity. The rest of the day we spent watching a movie and then doing yoga.

Trip to Aullwood Audubon

Today we went to Aullwood Audubon to learn more about nature and how it is a community, where everything is reliant on each other. Producers like plants which create their own food are food for some consumers, such as animals, which are food for even more consumers. Without one consumer, other consumers might not exist. And without them an ecosystem could collapse. There are also decomposers, which ensure that the buildup of dead material can be broken back down into nutrients for the living. At Aullwood Audubon we walked through the forest with binoculars, looking at all of these different things and seeing how we can identify them. We found several species of birds, trees, shrubs, fungi, and animals. At one point along the trail we stopped by some water and used small nets to see if we could catch anything. We quickly were able to find a variety of species, somewhere between five and seven species. For me I was able to find three or four small ones. One of them was a long and thin bug with even thinner legs to move around with. In an attempt to put one of these in a tube our guide accidentally bumped lightly. This light bump was enough to kill it, however.

I found sifting through the water and actually finding living creatures of different species interesting, but more interesting was the snake they showed us when we got back to the main building. It was a Black Rat snake, if my memory serves me correctly. We were allowed to handle the snake and let it slither across our arms. I was a little nervous to hold in because I didn’t know what the texture of its scales would be, as I never handled a snake before. When it was in my hand it wasn’t so bad. They also told us some information about the type of snake, like how it knew better to attack us simply because of size difference. The snake knew that we’re simply too large for it to even hope to stand a chance. Once it was in our hands it was much more comfortable with us being there. After this we went over to the barn and saw some of the animals there, then went back to DRSS. Once there we wrote a contemplation or meditation script about something in nature. Mine I based somewhat on what we did earlier today. The rest of this post is what I wrote.

I am standing on a balcony looking out into the forest surrounding me, trying my hardest to localize where the songs sung by the birds are coming from. Picking the tiny shapes of the birds proves itself difficult when matched against the hundreds of trees and thousands of leaves that they could hide behind. When I find them, I look closer with my binoculars and see their unique colors and figures. I’m only able to see them for a few seconds before they lift of the branches of the trees and disappear from sight behind the thick layer of leaves.

I know there are hundreds or thousands of birds in the woods around me, spread out for miles until there are only a couple around. In order to see them all at once you would have to go so high you wouldn’t be able to see them at all, simply because of their small size. That far away a bird could be completely visible, not blocked by anything, but yet be invisible to the naked eye. Maybe with a telescope one would be able to zoom far enough in to see the birds once again. But even then, you would only be able to see one or a few at a time. Only in my mind could I be able to see all of them, understanding their existence and participation in the surrounding environment.

Centralized in the middle of the thought is me, still standing on the balcony wondering where all the birds really are, only knowing that they are out of my vision but not my mind.

Us standing on the balcony where I based the contemplation script off of

My Time at Cox Arboretum

Today we picked up some things we left off on yesterday, finishing an exercise for describing something we usually don’t look at in much detail and describing it in the five senses. Once we were done with that we got ready and went to Cox Arboretum. I really enjoyed my time there. While we were there we took pictures of five different trees and a creature. Once we did that we were allowed to walk around the park as we pleased, taking more pictures if we wanted to. It was really relaxing being able to just wander around a park and go off the trail to see things. At one point I went over near the lake with another classmate to see some ducks, and then some geese swam over to us and walked around. They weren’t attacking us at all though, and were pretty passive to the ducks as well. I was able to take a picture of one of the geese up close with one of its gosling.

Coffee Tree

A bird that landed right next to me

A turtle in one of the ponds

River Birch

A frog that sat on a classmate's waterbottle

Red Maple

The Geese that walked right up to us

Weeping Willow

Bald Cypress