the final team... or is it?

well today certainly wasn't panning out how i'd envisioned it...

i'd actually nearly had a real romantic date with lillian! of course right at the last minute everything had gone weird... not wrong mind you (i was this close to a nose nuzzle!) just weird.

for you see, our special talent agent peter bond had finally organized his big plan for us finding fame here at the OH-lympics. he'd called in a bunch of other vivus-dinosaurs from various museums from around the world, and wanted us all to compete against each other. the problem is that all those other dinosaurs showed up right in the middle of my date!!!

as all the other dinosaurs were in teams of 3 representing different parts of the world (china, the united states of america, gondwana, and australia) this left me and lillian with the obvious questions of what team were we on, and with who else?

so the two of us went hunting for our talent agent in hopes of tracking down some answers to these open questions...

as we walked lillian told me the best thing i'd heard since i'd arrived here in vancouver. "i had a lovely afternoon traumador."

"really?" i responded in anticipation. lillian nodded (a human trait she'd picked up from her years as a museum attraction... theropods don't naturally nod in agreements). i had to ask. "would you like to do it again when we get a chance?"

"yes," she definitely stated. though added a moment later. "if peter gives us a chance."

though it wasn't the best joke ever we both chuckled...

then it dawned on me, just like that i had another date with lillian! were we "going out" now? i had no clue... partially as i had no clue what that meant, i'd just heard it on TV a lot when the people on it were dating a lot. which doesn't make sense! i'd already gone out with lillian. didn't that mean we were just going out again?

we were quickly getting closer to where peter told us to meet him, and a strange but familiar smell built in the air. unlike during our date, both me and lillian could tell you the source of this smell, as our instincts started our mouths watering a bit...

there was a ceratopsian nearby!... and a human too, but our tyrannosaurian instincts picked up the horned dinosaur first. on the beach earlier we hadn't recognized the other dinosaurs smells immediately as most of them were completely foreign to our prehistoric albertan instincts.

as we came around the corner the question of who our teammate was got answered. standing with peter was my childhood friend norman a. centrosaurus!!!

this was a welcome sight, for in all the craziness that was my trip to calgary, i hadn't managed to properly say good bye to norman as i'd promised i would. cool, with him on my team i'd get to visit with him a whole bunch more!

norman honked a greeting at us (or just me, i'm not sure), which i did my best to return (my tyrannosaurid throat is just not designed for the noise. i have enough trouble with english!). this caused lillian to look at me really funny though...

peter not noticing lillian's sudden hostile stance happily greeted us. "ah good, the rest of team canada has arrived!"

well that ended all the wondering, and it all made sense. ignoring that me and lillian had effectively been exiled from the country, the three of us were all canadian dinosaurs originally. better yet we'd all grown up in the same town!

not that we'd all gotten along back in those days... which was appearing to be a problem now!

peter started blabbing on about our "game plan" for the dinosaur OH-lympics... which if i caught it all right (i was heavily distracted as you'll see) entailed us winning, and not much else in line of a plan...

however had he been paying attention behind him, our team was not off to a very good start. lillian started growling at norman rather aggressively. norman being a ceratopsian instinctively responded with threatening snorts.

oh crud! i'd totally forgotten this facet of lillian. despite not wanting to join the pack of the primordial feather, she was still a pretty pure tyrannosaurid when it came down to it. like most other vivus-theropods, lillian has a real disdain for "prey" animals, and ceratopsians and hadrosaurs are at the top of her dislike list. meaning she was viewing norman as a dinner on legs, and not an equal worthy of being on a team with her!

as for norman he is pretty impartial about the whole theropod vs. none theropod issue, having hung out with me and zendin throughout his childhood. in fact me and him owe a lot of our outcast status to our tolerance of each other. however if you are hostile to norman than his stubborn ceratopsian tendencies boil to the surface, and he'll quickly take a disliking to you. which was just what had happened between him and lillian!

peter ended his little peep talk on the most ironic line he could have picked! "so here's to a united team canada. let's smoke the rest of the world!"

a united team... man, peter couldn't have been further from the reality of our members right now. even if he'd tried. sure i could get along with either one of them perfectly fine. lillian and norman on the other hand were already close to mortal enemies!

go canada go? oh man...

next: the costs of OH-lympics!