Adventures of Tedesco - A Prehistoric Visitation

This is the second in what may become a series of adventures with the character based on my boy. [Please see the entry dated Feb. 15 for the first ‘Adventures of Tedesco’.] He’s my in-house fact checker when it comes to all things prehistoric. I read him the draft the other day. He liked it, but politely advised me that the mammal I used in the draft was in the wrong time period. After double checking I confirmed the veracity of his input. Exit the predecessor to the horse (Hyracotherium) of the Eocene epoch, enter Lesothosaurus of the Jurassic.


Adventures of Tedesco - A Prehistoric Visitation


It was a bright summer day. Two more months of no school! He’d be starting 3rd grade in the fall. Tedesco was a lolligagger during the school year trying to get him out of bed and downstairs for breakfast by 7:00. But now that there was no school he was regularly up by 6:15 downstairs and watching cartoons or a dinosaur related DVD before anyone else was even awake.

Today was Saturday. Picnic day. ‘After dad makes pancakes and mom has her hot tea with breakfast she’ll pack a cooler of tasty grub and we’ll get this show on the road,’ he thought to himself. Meanwhile he hunkered down on the couch watching his program while eating a bowl of cereal without milk.

Tedesco liked picnic day. The park was big and there weren’t usually many people. He really enjoyed the playgrounds and going for hikes in the park’s hills with his dog, Kira.

They arrived at the park and got a great stretch of grass near a good playground and trails leading into the hills. There was practically nobody else nearby so dad let the dog off leash. Tedesco and his sister, Jackie, ran immediately for the playground, slides, and swings. The dog followed at a leisurely trot. She was a good dog and was very protective of her babies, even though Tedesco was now bigger than Kira.

Before long the kids were called in for lunch. Tedesco, always the busy guy, was often impatient with the task of eating but he knew it was a bootless discussion to say he didn’t want to eat. He’d lately taken a new approach, ‘Eat the meal so I can get to something good.’ The ‘something good’ was usually dessert. But on picnic day it meant that he could return to playtime.

With no further adieu he knocked back his peanut butter no jelly sandwich, a cheese stick, yogurt, half a banana, and two juice boxes. Jackie, a consistently lackadaisical eater, was barely underway. His mom and dad hadn’t even started eating yet.

“I’m done. Can I go play,” Tedesco blared with peanut butter smeared on his cheek and a blotch of yogurt on his shirt.

“OK, Chief, but stay where we can see you, please,” offered his dad looking forward to his bratwurst on toasted bun with ketchup and sweet mustard.

Immediately bolting for the nearby trail he dashed off into the trees. Kira followed at a gallop tongue hanging out the side of her mouth.

They quickly went off trail and were deep in the trees and underbrush. Tedesco saw a pond. The water was very murky and the shoreline muddy. How tempting for a little guy. He saw a rock in the middle of the pond with a turtle on it. He also saw the No Trespassing sign. A sign, but heck, certainly a turtle is more important than the sign, he figured.

“Kira, let’s get that turtle,” saying to his dog thinking he could walk on the mud all the way there. But not so. His first step yielded a foot that sank up to his ankle.

“Oh, no. I’m busted,” he said out loud looking down at mud covering his shoe all the way to the bottom of his jeans. “Well, I’m already muddy, how much worse can it get. Come on, Kira,” proceeding toward the rock with no further restraint.

He took three large steps trying to reach the rock and ended up belly deep in mud, far deeper than he expected, and he was sinking. His dog had immediately followed with three large leaps and was now also submerged up to her neck and chest and she too was sinking. And they were sinking fast. Tedesco, really scared, called to his dog, “You’re a good dog, Kira.” Then yelled out for anybody who might hear, “Someone help us,” and he took a breathe before going under. Kira, with two barks, was also gone.


Feeling groggy, wet, and covered completely with mud he and his dog awakened on the muddy shore. This did not look familiar. The two sat down trying to gather their senses. Tedesco looked around trying to think what to do. Where were they?.

A dragonfly flew by. But it was a surprising 12-inches long!

“Freaky,” said Tedesco still too groggy to be scared. Continuing to look at the scenery he noticed a few things that were odd. There were no buildings, roads, cars, or people. Even the plants didn’t look right. There was no grass. There were no flowering plants. Something’s wrong here. “Kira, where are we,” starting to comprehend the depths of their troubles.

Kira had also gathered that something was very wrong. She stood up and started smelling. Taking wafts of the air and then the ground around her and then more snufflings of the warm breeze that had enveloped them. She bit at Tedesco’s muddy pants, gave a little tug, and let go. She hustled toward an outgrowth of shrubs, stopped, looked back at her Tedesco until he stood and followed, and then continued quickly into the bushes.

From their vantage point they could see out onto an open plain with only a few unusual trees and low lying plants. A large plant eating dinosaur had appeared almost a football field away! Stegosaurus! Easily identified by the plates along its back. It was a large lumbering dinosaur whose body was larger than a car and its tail extended even longer. There were a dozen or so plates that stood on its back perpendicularly to the ground. Its tail had four large spikes at the end. They were as long as drum sticks but thicker and very pointy. It was grazing on plants.

Tedesco had spent much time studying dinosaurs. He had numerous books and videos in his personal library plus he’d checked out all the dinosaur books from his local library, twice. He knew it was a plant eater and it did not worry him. But the lack of concern was fleeting.

From the other direction came an Allosaurus, a fierce meat eating dinosaur! The Allosaurus stood on two legs, looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and was taller than a house! It roared horribly and showed off its large teeth that were as sharp and as long as steak knives. Through his diligent studies he recognized the Allosaurus by the three claws at the end of each arm, the T-Rex had only two. The Allosaurus was the predecessor to the T-Rex by many millions of years.

Tedesco knew his prehistoric timeline. Both these dinosaurs were alive 203 million to 135 million years ago. They’d been extinct for over 100 million years! How was he going to get home from the late Jurassic Period?

His senses had now returned as did a significant degree of fear. Not only was there a meat eating dinosaur on the front, Tedesco knew that he would be prey if it saw him.

With the appearance of the Allosaurus a number of other smaller plant eating creatures huddled into the bushes next to him and his dog. One animal he recognized was the Lesothosaurus, a three foot tall plant eater that looked like a lizard that walked and ran upright on two legs. Kira was too worried about the two large beasts ahead to give any attention to chasing these smaller animals.

The dinosaurs engaged in battle. The Stegosaurus with its back plates flared up colorfully in red to send a signal to the meat eater that it was not backing off. It waged war with its rear end facing the Allosaurus so that it could get the four spikes at the end of its tail near its adversary. It swung its tale and spikes fiercely back and forth.

The Allosaurus had seen this many times before. It was being patient, waiting for the opportunity when the Stegosaurs might be off balance and the Allosaurus would be able to run in past the spikes and chomp away at the ample flesh.

After a lengthy scuffle neither was gaining an advantage. They both backed away from each other to a safer distance, though neither retreated. It was just then that five Compsognathuses, meat and insect eating dinosaurs the size of chickens, charged the plants where Tedesco, Kira, and the other animals were trying to hide in silence.

All the animals quickly scattered. Only Tedesco and Kira remained. The size of a chicken, yes, but fierce like nothing they’d seen before. The Compsognathus was as quick as a striking snake and knew no fear when traveling in larger groups such as this, even in the face of two animals that were twice as large as they were.

Kira stepped in between her boy and the little meat eaters. There was growling and roaring from the commotion and the Allosaurus turned to look. Tedesco and Kira were now out away from the bushes and stood in the open. The Allosaurus charged and covered ground very quickly.

With the Compsognathuses on one side and the Allosaurus nearly upon them on the other Tedesco backed away in the only other direction available. Back into the water from whence they came. He then realized it wasn’t water so much as it was mud.

“Kira, come,” worried for his dog. He knew his dog wouldn’t back away if she thought Tedesco was in trouble, so he called again with a little force in his voice. “Kira, come!”

Keeping her eyes on the predators, large and small, she backed toward Tedesco who was knee deep. He saw a rock at the center of the pond and . . . was that a turtle on the rock?

As they backed into the mud the dinosaurs stood on the shore, not even touching it. Tedesco and Kira sank in deeper with each step but neither had any inclination to stop. With one final stretch Tedesco tried to reach the rock. He did! But he was slipping . . . and sinking. Kira was right there struggling to reach him. Tedesco clamored at the rock and reached up grabbing for anything to get a hold of, but the sinking was too much. He was still engulfed up to his chest and lost all energy. Hopeless, he sank. Kira was already gone. He took a deep breath and thought of his family.


The two woke up on the muddy shoreline in the shade. There was a No Trespassing sign. They were covered in another coat of mud. They stood up, recognizing immediately they had returned to Picnic Day. They both ran back to the picnic.

“I’m sorry I got my shoes dirty! I’m sorry I got my shoes dirty,” yelled Tedesco fifty feet away from his parents and running at a full sprint.

“Whoa, what happened to you guys? You’re not coming home in that condition,” said dad very unhappy at the prospect of trying to clean them both well enough to get them in the car.

“I missed you guys so much,” Tedesco blathered on not even bothering to wipe the mud from his face.

“You guys didn’t leave more than two minutes ago,” said dad who had not even taken his first bite of bratwurst.

“Hey, what’s that in your hand, you dirty animal,” said mommy to her mud-laden boy.

Noticing for the first time the very unusual turtle shell that he must have grabbed at the prehistoric pond. Holding it up in his hand it was only the shell. The animal inside was extinct 100 million years ago.

“Kira, stop it!,” yelled Jackie as her dog shook mud everywhere.


-klem
3/2009