boy are our faces pink...

as much as i "like" waiting for things to happen, i actually bore quite easy. while we vivus-dinosaurs wait around the royal british columbia museum for the convention my special talent agent peter bond has organized, i decided to put together my own event. especially since we're all just standing around victoria doing nothing at the moment.

over on ART Evolved they're just about to wrap up their pink dinosaurs for cancer research event, and i realized with great embarrassment that none of us vivus-dinosaurs have done anything for it!?!

so i called in every friend and favour i could!

i started off with lillian the albertosaur, as my idea was quite public and there was a chance some celebrity could result from it. this was enough to get her to agree. though i made sure to keep out the other dinosaur involvement. lillian has been quite volatile about being around other dinosaurs lately.

like i thought, apart from her sensitive snout (which i predicted given how my own nose is), lillian didn't mind my paint job.

norman a. centrosaur on the other hand was a lot more skeptical about my motives, not that he minded the paint job.

`

"are you sure about this?" he demanded multiple times throughout my covering him in paint.

`

"of course i am," i'd try to assure him.

`

"i know you think you're sure," norman would retort. "i just want to make sure this isn't one of those times you've convinced yourself of something, only to find out it was your brain making it up, leaving us in the lurch."

"why are you suddenly so sensitive?" i finally asked him, wondering what his sudden concern about our cause was. "back in the old days you were never this worried about me making a tiny brain mistake."

`

clearly he was embarrassed by whatever he was worried about, as he awkwardly recomposed himself before saying. "true, but normally you weren't making me change my colouring into something that might be seen as ridiculous by the outside world."

i guess norman did have a point there. normally a pink dinosaur would be cause of ridicule and amusement, but i had it on good authority pink was not just acceptable in october, but really the classy thing to do. norman relented after i explained it to him.

the best of my art subjects had to be dollie the stegosaur my new friend from the OH-lympics. unlike the other two she didn't need to told a reason, other than i needed her help. dollie and me had a lot in common, wanting to help others out seemed to be high up the list.

getting my three master pieces together on the front lawn of the royal british columbia museum, i had the vivus contribution to the pink dinosaur event together!

`

i think they look pretty sweet, don't you?

just after i'd taken the necessary photos, i was about to wrap up when norman mischievously said "one second, traumador. there is one thing missing from your pink dinosaurs."

`

"what's that?" i asked starting to turn around.

norman with mouth half full replied. "a pink tyrannosaurus rex," and with that he dumped the last of my pink paint all over me!!!

royal british columbia museum

me and norman have arrived in victoria british columbia, after our nice (but slightly sad) ferry ride. our reason for being here was this special dinosaur OH-lympics convention that my special talent agent peter bond has organized.

i wasn't quite sure what to expect from the convention, but i was really excited about the venue!

norman and i earlier this afternoon went to scope out our new "workplace" for the next week. the royal british columbia museum!

now as i'm sure my regular readers know, i LOVE museums! (for you new people out there, i LOVE museums... there now you're up to speed :P). so i'm always pretty stoked when i get to check out a new one!

i have to say this museum is one of the coolest i've ever been to, and as you'll see this is kind of surprising. there isn't a single dinosaur in the place!

no dinosaurs isn't the same as no fossils or palaeontologic displays though, mind you. this is one of two similar cases show casing british columbia's fossil diversity... and that's about all the fossils to be seen in the museum.

i've show cased some individual specimens for my fossil of the weekend feature. you can check these out here, here, here, here, here, here, there, here, over here, and finally there. not exactly a palaeontologic hotspot... though this is WAY better than none at all.

the RBCM does boast on very fine palaeo related display, and that is their fleshed out wholly mammoth sculpture!

what makes this display cool (pun intended as you'll see!) is the amount of detail and attention they put into it (though this is not an exception for the royal BC! just an exception compared to other museums!). they've gone all out to capture the ice age feeling... not only does really cold air blow at you from the exhibit, but the ice covering the terrain around the mammoth is actual ice!!!

from the prehistoric section one wonders into the modern natural history area. here you are treated to some great diorama's of BC's ecology.

one of the highlights was the coast's of BC displays, complete with an actual living specimen tidal pool!

(it was this point in our tour that norman and i ran into some of our fellow dinosaur olympians... team australia's boom and rang decided to tag along with us. so they'll pop up in many of my pics)

one of the most off topic, but awesome, exhibits in this section had to be the underwater display. rather than setup a normal deep sea recreation, the designers at the RBCM opted for a fun "vehicle" to bring you to the ocean (rather than the ocean to you). their choice of a rather jules verne style submarine definitely a big hit with me... i love the nautilus and 20000 leagues under the sea!

it felt a bit like sneaking into captain nemo's personal study, with all his personal specimens and collections scattered about the place.

way too cool!

after the "first" floor (i say first with quotation marks as technically this was all on the 2nd floor, the 1st floor is just the lobby, gift shop, and theatres/auditoriums) on proceeds up to the next floor...

here you encounter the human history of BC. the 19th century victoria area was really cool...

i've been to a few places (example here) with these old skool versions of a city, but the RBCM's is truly a jewel example of one. all the little touches are there. like steam coming off the pots in the kitchen (along with a mouse scurrying along the floor!). a train comes by the train station every 10 minutes (okay its a clever set of lights with sound effects, but it sure feels like a train it is that loud!).

we also ran into all of team australia here. ms. rhonwyn and logan the muttaburrasaurus were busy checking it out too.

next was probably the highlight of the museum. the aboriginal gallery.

i can't go into detail... not because it wasn't amazing. it was... it's just that my magic sense was nearly going off, and you all remembered what happened last time that happened. so i didn't stick around too long.

from what i saw it was unbelievable though... though for some (really ominously magically) reason i have a feeling this isn't the last i've seen of this spot in the museum...

the history of BC stuff was cool. they had a whole bunch on the fishing and forestry heritage of the coast.

its just too bad that my time here was disrupted somewhat by misbehaving hypsilophodons! i have to say i'm glad i don't live or work with boom or rang. they are really nice to visit or goof around with. however they never stop, and are a real hand full. poor logan had to chase them all over the forestry exhibit. in the end the two leaellynasaura stopped more because they'd climbed or jumped on every inch of the display, and got bored being chased.

my favourite display in the whole RBCM was this replica of captain vancouver's ship the hms discovery. which is weird, as it is not palaeo or prehistoric...

i don't know how, the boat doesn't move or anything. yet still when you go on it...

you feel slightly sea sick everytime you go on it! the boat is seriously stationary, and yet it pulls off this illusion!?! incredible...

anyways overall a fantastic museum they have here in BC. my only suggestion: needs more dinosaurs :P

ferryness

as if there weren't enough surprises with the dinosaur winter OH-lympics already, my special talent agent peter bond had gone and added one of the biggest this week.

with next to no warning, peter made the rounds of all the vivus-dinosaur OH-lympic teams, and instructed us to board the morning ferry to victoria BC for a special OH-lympic "event"... not really sure of what else to do, all of us confusedly set off this morning on a big boat...

i was kind of excited. i'd never been to vancouver island, that alone the capital of british columbia. from everything i've heard it is a lovely part of canada.

sadly taking away some of my enthusiasm was why we were going... peter's special event at the royal british columbia museum, where we saurian "OH-lympians" would get to meet our loving public. at least that's how peter described it.

it would appear that while the majority of the dinosaur games thus far had been something close to a flop, the dinosaur ice hockey had become a HUGE phenomenon... at least here in canada. suddenly we saurian athletes were national celebrities, and peter intended to cash in on that (and hopefully get back some of my money!).

which meant all of us were going on display for a week. not exactly how i pictured my big break out being once again merely an item on exhibit in a museum. don't get me wrong, i love museums, but i do dislike the attitude that we dinosaurs only belong in a museum! why couldn't our big break out be somewhere that a human would get their recognition? why do we have to fall back on a museum the instant we're having success in the real world?

at least for this trip i had good company on the subject. i was spending the ferry trip with norman the centrosaur, a fellow dinosaur rights advocates. fortunately, me and him had patched things up from our fight the other day. his grudge wasn't with me, but rather lillian albertosaurus (though my crush on her complicated things). lillian herself wasn't talking to either of us. which bummed me out, but norman wasn't losing any sleep over it.

despite the collapse of team canada, it was like old times talking with norman, especially our philosophising about our impending displaydom. i like to think the only reason i amounted to anything approaching smart (with my tiny brain) was norman. our discussions back in our childhoods were a big part of me growing up to be the dinosaur i am today...

sure most people thought it was me hanging out with zendin... oh man, that was a punch in the gut. why did i have to think of zendin right now. especially hanging out with norman! i can't even bear the thought of what i know about zendin's fate. that alone the fact i'd been keeping it from norman this whole time...

anyways, it was nice to talk to norman. i'd realized how much i'd missed him all these years since we both were exiled from drumheller... that and it was fun to have him alone on this new adventure. i hadn't had close friends like him along on my blog-era adventures often. even if i wasn't too keen on the event at our destination, the location was appealing.

the trip was already proving worthwhile, just from the boat ride alone!

many times me and norman's debate would stop as we both gazed around us.

can you blame us though?

victoria lies about an hour and a half from vancouver across georgia's strait on vancouver island. inbetween the two are many smaller islands. many of which our ferry had to pass right by. it was really really pretty!

we saw lots of wildlife. one of my favourite sightings, and should be a backyard dinosaur really, was this log full of cormorants.

the little island villages were really scenic too.

overall it was a nice relaxing trip. even if me and norman were trying to stress out about what my talent agent was about to make us do...

the thing is we were in for some surprises. the funny thing is most of them good!

to be continued with: dino-fest!

caught between a tyrannosaur and a ceratopsian...

oh man...

to say that the dinosaur winter games had not been going my way, was becoming THE understatement of the year!

they were potentially bankrupting me, keeping me stuck in canada (i've got things to get back to in new zealand... it feels like i've been away for AGES!), and worst of all were humiliating me in front of the whole world. not once, but twice!

the latest of those was the hockey match. it was not only a bad game, but it was now having some major effects on my life beyond the rink too...

team canada had gotten creamed. we totally lost to team china. the worst part, i was probably the big cause of it all!

well okay, while i'm known to try and take the blame for everything (i am a canadian t-rex after all!), but some of the blame really does deserve to goto my special talent agent peter bond...

despite knowing that i couldn't skate, he fielded me on the ice in the first place. his logic at the time was that if some of his dinosaurs couldn't skate, other teams would have that problem too... so much for that idea. i was the only dinosaur (so far anyway... team gondwana hasn't played yet) who can't skate in the whole OH-lympics!

what a great way to make me the star of the games!?! he even made me buy my own team canada jersey. making me the only dinosaur to wear a uniform... though as a side note i can't figure out why everyone makes fun of the back of it?

you'd think this isolation and humiliation would be the most of my problems. well it does suck, but there was an even bigger problem to team canada's defeat. my team itself!

you see, lillian albertosaurus and norman a. centrosaur hadn't been all that keen about being on the same team in the first place. with the really public (and talked about) defeat of the home team they were REALLY not getting along now!

leaving the stadium after the game, the two weren't keeping their contempt for each other contained...

it got so bad that the police had to keep the public at a safe distance.

not that i want to have to say bad things about the girl of my dreams, but in fairness to norman, it was lillian who was the true instigator. she ripped into him for being a "stupid" "open skulled" ceratopsian (while it is sort of true the norman's frill is in a sense open, in that it hoad two hollows way up to reduce his head's weight... this doesn't mean his skull is substandard and thus making him stupid or something... as lillian was trying to get at).

norman didn't help matters though by insulting lillian back about being conceited and full of herself...

of course the news picked up the whole fight... which is probably only going to make matters worse later on. ugh.

it is times like this i realized why vivus dinosaurs have such a bad spot in the modern world.

at the end of the very public (potentially embarrassing) fight they both stormed off even more furious with the other. peter was still up in the boardcast booth doing our game's post game coverage, and was oblivious to the whole incident. leaving me all by myself to try and clean up the whole mess.

why did i stick my snout into all this? the smart thing to do would have been to stay out frankly. though when have i ever been known for being the smartest guy around?

well we still had more OH-lympic events to go, and team canada needed to stay a team to keep competing or we'd have to drop out (and possibly lose me all my money that peter had invested in these dumb games in the first place). more to the point they were both my friends, and good friends at that...

i'd known norman since i was a hatchling. we went way back. i wanted lillian to be my mate someday. it tore me up that these two really important dinosaurs in my life weren't getting along. there just had to be a way i could get them to like each other, and the various parts of my life would combine into a really happy whole...

why do i always have these impossibly noble intentions?

i ran into lillian first. she was angerily pacing outside the stadium.

i greeted her, and tried to innocently ask her how she was feeling...

this was my first big mistake of the day (after the game anyways). lillian might be a more progressive thinking tyrannosaurid than our relatives in the pack of the primordial pack, but not by that much more (compared to me). her full, albertosaur sized, temper suddenly zoned in on me.

"how am i feeling!?!" she growled. "how else do you think i'd feel after you and that open skull humiliated me in front of the whole world!!!"

"so not good," i answered automatically.

i was answered with a full on angry albertosaur howl... not exactly a settling sound, i must say.

"i'll take the full blame for the game, lillian," i tried to be selfless, and take one for the team. "norman played almost as good as you did." you know that was a good move on my part. complementing lillian with that, while at the same time playing up norman. if only lillian saw it that way...

"yes you were rather pathetic weren't you!" lillian agreed, but in a far more cutting way than i'd thought. "however the fact that i, a former world class attraction, was shamed by a runt like you and a ceratopsian. i can't even put into words how disgusted that makes me feel. of all thing,s a gutless open skull."

her words shouldn't have surprised me. in fact what she said about me slipped right off. i'd been insulted worse, by her and others. more to the point i was chalking this up to her theropod temper (we have slightly uncontrollable boiling points we meat eating dinosaurs). yet it was how she was putting down my friend norman that got me upset. she didn't even know him, that alone take the time to get to know him.

"i'll have you know that 'gutless' centrosaur has stuck his neck out a few times to help me out!" i countered forcefully. the second after i said it, i realized it had been a mistake.

"yes that is right, you are even worse aren't you," she insulted. "you lower yourself to being the equal of a prey animal!" yeah so when i said she wasn't as progressive as me, i'd forgotten by what a margin. lillian may have abandoned all notions of carrying on our ancestors' cretaceous ways, but she still held a fairly typical theropod mindset. especially about non-theropods.

"how does that make me a worse dinosaur?" i challenged. "at least it shows i'm strong enough to adapt to our present situation. those 'prey animals' are some of the few living things that know what we are going through. only someone cowardly and backwards would hold on the the notion we are somehow..." oops i really shouldn't have said cowardly. especially to a female tyrannosaurid!

lillian didn't say anything. she just charged at me with a challenge roar. i knew better than stay in the path of an on coming raging albertosaur. so i high tailed it out of there.

great. now i'd really urked the girl of my dreams. i knew much of what she'd said and done was just her mesozoic instincts taking over. yet in some ways i found lillians attitude really bothered me... i'd set about my life to try and combat the tyrannosaur sterotype. did i really want to spend my life with someone who embodied that very thing?

no i didn't. yet lillian was not beyond saving i decided. she'd said no to the pack, and in essence our ancient ways that they represented. if she could do that, than i was sure i could get her to come around on non-theropods...

though for the timing being i'd really ticked her off. oh man.

i wasn't going to make things any better in a second either!

i managed to track norman down fairly quickly after that. the good news about norman's kind being one of my "prey" in the olden days, was that my nose was pretty attuned to picking up his scent.

"how you holding up?" i asked my childhood friend.

"let's just say i've had better days," norman replied frankly.

"yeah the game was pretty rough," i thankful agreed. phew! he wasn't going to try and divide my loyalties... at least that's what i'd hoped.

"the game could have gone better," norman agree, but than clarified what he'd meant a moment earlier. "no, i meant having to put up with that stuck up albertosaur you think is so pretty."

"she's not that stuck up," i tried to counter. than had clarify myself. "okay she can be when she's angry. that's the only time though. honest. i've seen her nice many times."

"listen to yourself, traum," norman pleaded with me. "you're trying to defend a typical self important tyrant. everything you hate about your own kind! you seriously don't still have that silly crush on her, do you?!?"

"so what if i do?" i answered back definitely. though in my heart i wasn't sure at moment.

"traum, seriously, speaking as a friend, you can do better," norman said as sincerely as he could. the statement hurt for some reason. it really shouldn't have, yet it ran me over almost as bad as lillian's charge would have.

"what do you know? how can you be sure there is a tyrannosaurid who is better?!?" i found myself countering angrily... not that i'd wanted to snap. just with all the stress of lillian and now norman questioning my affection for the other, my own tyrannosaur temper had snapped.

norman just rolled his eyes. "what i do know traumador, is that deep down your better than all of your kind put together," he stated. "but as long as you're hung up on that carnivore throw back, you'll never live up to your potential."

i didn't say anything, i was desperately fighting off my own theropod temper tantrum...

"just look at yourself man," norman instructed me. "you're a step away from pulling a larry on me here. all because of lillian."

i still didn't say anything, i was literally biting my lips to keep from howling in anger myself. though i'm pretty sure i was throwing a pretty good death glare at him.

"seriously traum, she might be the only one of your 'kind' not to be in the pack, but she isn't that much better than them," norman concluded. "if it were me, i'd be glad to be alone, than mated to something that held me back as much as she would you. you are a one of kind tyrannosaur, my old friend. until you realize you deserve a one of a kind mate to match you, you'll never be happy."

norman started to walk off. "please think about it traumador. is she trying to impress you? or is it still like always you trying to impress her... because these days what does she have that you don't?"

once norman was out of sight, i let off my rage. for the next few minutes i was a trembling huffing mess.

than as my nerves calmed and my temper calmed i had a good think about what he'd said. you know he was right...

norman had always been good at analyzing us vivus dinosaurs, and the roles we tried to play in the modern world (despite the fact we were displaced from these roles by tens of millions of years). in some ways he was right. not just about lillian's discriminations, but how i'd always been trying to impress her.

really these days she was as homeless, displaced, and without purpose as me. only i wasn't so lonely. lillian was so busy trying to be a strong independent albertosaur, that she'd driven away all the potential allies she could have now. the only reason lillian was getting anywhere these days was because of me... i was her only friend, but she certainly wasn't my only one these days!

so the question was should i lose my crush on her, like norman suggested? or was she redeemable? could i make her see the error of her ways, and the benefits of not "being" a tyrannosaur? or was she a lost cause, no better than a member of the pack?

what do you think people of the web wide world?

looming doom... the OH-lympics are on!!!

i won't lie. i'm kind of angry people of the web wide world...

angry at the one guy i thought i could trust... my special talent agent peter bond.

i'd given him money to take lillian the albertosaur around the world and try to reclaim her lost fame... i didn't give it to him to fund these dinosaur OH-lympics of his! i currently have nothing left. meaning i'm stranded here in canada!

peter assures me that if these OH-lympics are a success i'll not only make my money back, but a lot more... which is fine and dandy, assuming he is right... but how often do things work out in my life?!?

meaning my only hope of getting back to new zealand is to go ahead with these crazy games of peter's... otherwise i'm doomed.

although speaking of doom, i have to say the start to these games are turning out to be very scary!!!

peter took aside the whole of team canada, which consisted of myself, norman a. centrosaurus, and lillian to tell us about the first event. immediately we dinosaurs could all tell something epic was about to go down. literally go down too! as looming behind peter was the first venue of the dinosaur winter OH-lympics...

this first game was something called ski jumping... which no, unlike its name does not mean you're trying to train a ski to leap or something (uh not that that's what i thought it was at first or anything...).

no apparently, in this human sport, the skis are strapped onto you and you jump off of a giant tower which only serves the purpose of being there for people with skis strapped on them to jump off of! how crazy is that?!? to my human readers, seriously what is going through your heads when you come up with these crazy "sports"?

(i guess i should mention that the giant tower has a ramp attached to it... making the jump a bit more interesting than a straight down plunge... i guess)

than came the tense moment, when we were going to decide who was going to jump off the big tower... there was good news in this, only one of us would have to do it. the bad news was that one of us would have to do it...

there was no way i was going jump off that tower!!! sadly for me my other two teammates had the same stance on the topic as i did...

"come on now team canada!" peter tried to rally us. "we need to show the world who the best is, and we can't do that if you're all too afraid to even step forward to the challenge."

"he thinks the jumping is the challenging part," norman muttered aloud for us all to hear.

"i'm more worried about the landing myself," i pointed out.

lillian rather than focus on the choosing issue, asked peter a very pointed, and frankly good question. "why are you telling us all this and selecting one of us now? can't this wait till we're up on the tower at least? when we can see exactly what we are doing."

"YEAH!!!" me and norman piped in together. it was a good point, why weren't we at the top of the tower?

"well my canuck-osauruses," peter cautioned. "the price we pay as the host team, is that unfortunately during events i won't be able to be your acting coach."

this didn't phase us as much as i think peter wanted it too. he'd been expecting a big gushing or something. however the lot of us just looked at each other unsure why this was a big deal... of course, none of us had ever participated in any sports before. we were going to find out all too soon why having a coach is a good thing.

with our lack of concern about his absence, peter pushed things back to selecting our ski jumper.

"i only have two skis," peter outlined. "so i need a biped to jump."

norman let out a sigh of relief. me and lillian nervously looked at each other. though i just knew that peter was going to select me. between me and lillian (norman to come to think of it) i was the most adaptive and human like out of the lot of us. if one of us was going to stand a chance of making this jump alive it was me.

which is why i was completely thrown for a loop when peter said. "now as the point of this sport is to travel the furthest, i'm reckoning weight will be the most important factor of the skier. so lillian as coach i'm picking you."

phew! i thought for a moment. then it hit me... i may not have been plunging to my doom, but the girl of my dreams about about to!!!

before i could speak up in protest, peter started to take off away from the ski jump. "okay gang, break a leg... oh right, don't do that! make canada proud and bring us home a gold instead!"

bring back some metal ore? what did that have do with speeding off a tower on two planks of wood?

before he was out of sight peter added. "oh and while the events going on, tune into channel 299 and let me know how i do."

what?!?

so while lillian is potentially learning why tyrannosaurs weren't the direct relatives of birds, peter would be doing what exactly?

to be continued: with leaping lizards!

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!

not where you'd expect a vivus to be...

so there i was enjoying a leisurely visit to the calgary zoo, when my trip was suddenly interupted.

turning around from one of the exhibits (the tigers, if you must know) i was confronted by the most unexpected sight at a zoo... a full grown bull ceratopsian!!!

now you'd think we living vivus-dinosaurs (vivus being the fancy scientific term for we non-extinct extinct critters) would be in high demand by zoos and similar places. no such luck for us sadly. for whatever reason these sorts of institutions typically insist on only modern animals as a rule... though this centrosaur would seem to be quite the extreme example of an exception to this otherwise standard rule...

it (a he actually, i could tell based on the bright colours... female ceratopsians are dull and drab in comparison) angrily addressed me by name "traumador the tyrannosaur," the centrosaur paused dramatically before continuing. "you've got a lot of nerve, showing up at my zoo unannounced!!!"

normally i'd have been intimidated. first off this guy was a lot bigger than me, had me corned at, and more to the "point" (pun intended) was adapted at hurting things like me for a living.

so you might ask why i replied like so... "i'd have called ahead to let you know i was coming, only i was worried that your inferior herbivore brain won't have processed more than my hello."

the centrosaur was quite taken aback. "my brain the inferior one?" it stated unimpressed. "you have taken a look in the mirror right?"

"yeah this morning. or at least i hope it was this morning, cause if i'm looking into one right now i'm really ugly," i countered. "what with those horns, frill, beak, and... and, uh." i stalled out on the insult... oh man! i hate it when i do that. i had it up until the "and". if i'd just thought to put in with the beak i'd have been fine...

the centrosaur just shook its head in a very human fashion. "same old traumador," it said disappointed. "you never could get an insult right."

we stood there for a minute coldly staring at each other...

till finally the happiness within me snapped the fake hostile charade, and i sprinted up to the horned ornithischian and sprang a full on hug at his snout. "NORMAN!" i happily screamed.

"how you been pea brain?" norman a. centrosaur greeted me back.

i couldn't believe my good luck... i'd been meaning to track down all my friends in calgary, but the only ones i'd been able to organize things were my human friends.

not that i didn't want to see norman. i just hadn't been able to track him down. which i explained to him.

i'd known he'd been sent to the zoo a few years ago, but when i called them from drumheller the zoo people had no idea who or what i was talking about.

"yeah, there not as vivus aware down here in the big city," norman dismissed the zoo. "none of them understand, that alone speak, any saurian languages, so we're not what you might call close. not a single person who works here even knows my name is norman!"

when i asked what they do call him. "most of them just refer to me as 'dinosaur'. a few of the sharper ones have figured out i'm like a 'triceratops', and the three who pay attention have caught on that i'm a centrosaurus just like the one in the prehistoric park."

"it doesn't really surprise me the people answering the phones wouldn't know it was me you were talking about," norman off handily acknowledged. "thanks for trying though," he paused. "it really is good to see you again traumador!"

i asked norman how he'd been since the last time i saw him... which was a long time ago.

"there's not much to relate," norman reflected. "i was in drumheller, and then i was sent here."

i looked at him waiting for more information. he just stared at me like i was silly. "what? that's what happened. what more can i say?"

well norman, you could have mentioned why you got axed from the tyrrell and sent here to a zoo... a place that really isn't that cut out for a horned dinosaur as cool as you... but i didn't say that out loud.

instead i explained how i'd come to be fired, and how the pack of the primordial feather had been behind it. in their effort to get to lillian.

"ah i see," norman replied understanding the type of gossip i was looking for. "well the herd was, and still to this day, getting more and more annoyed at me as i make more friends outside our 'oh so sacred' kind."

"the herd" was the unofficial (yet official) title for all the vivus-ceratopsians living in canada. ceratopsians were pretty social animals back in the cretaceous, and so the instinct to form into a herd is still pretty strong in them to this day.

however as there is so few of them alive today every last one of them, regardless of their genus or species, hangout together in one big group. this is not like the good old days millions of years ago! back then they'd have stuck to their own kinds literally, but one has to make due in tough times i guess.

there was rumours that "the herd" was bigger then the alberta region, and that it had branches so to speak anywhere ceratopsian fossils are found (well at least vivus-fossils!). in fact thinking about it all they sound a lot like the pack of the primordial feather! only just a lot less carnivorous, more pointy, and a whole lot tastier!

norman carried on. "anyways, so the museum approached the herd about a member who would like to volunteer to be sent down here. as the whole lot of them would melt if any single one of them were to be left on their own, none jumped at the 'opportunity'. so instead, the bulls decided to volunteer the least popular horner [saurian slang for ceratopsian]. which happened to be me."

"wow," i let out in response to this harsh treatment of my friend. "sorry you had to go through all that on account of me."

"don't go giving yourself all the credit!" norman laughed. "leave it to a tyrannosaur to think he is the king of the problems! no, they didn't like the fact i was friends with anyone or anything that wasn't a fellow horner. though i guess to be fair you and zendin were at the top of their hate list." norman winked... a very human thing he'd picked up ages ago. no normal ceratopsian would be caught dead showing this much emotion. that alone a big tough bull.

"so yeah i ended up here at the zoo. supposedly as a walking billboard for the tyrrell," norman stated. "only no one bothered to work out exactly how that was going to work beyond me living and working here..."

norman didn't speak any english (there are few dinosaurs who can... i'm the only theropod i know of who can... mind you, he like MOST dinos can understand human speak, he just can't answer verbally), and the museum didn't see it fit to expend someone to stay with norman and translate. meaning he and the zoo's staff couldn't really communicate beyond anything nods and gestures would convey.

not that norman minded all that much. it meant there were no big expectations of him in this job. he just got to wander around interacting with people all day.

"i love the job itself," norman concluded. "i just get lonely sometimes is all. not that the staff aren't great to me. i just never have anyone i can actually talk too."

"in fact this is the first time i've talked to anyone who could understand me all year!" he stated excitedly realizing this depressing fact.

norman then turned to me and demanded. "enough with my sob story. what is your deal. from the few tendrils of the grape vine i have left, you left the museum just after i did. where have you been managing to hide that no one has heard or seen you in all that time?!?"

where to begin? i have this whole blog worth of adventures since then... so i told me for the better part of 3 hours my various stories and tales... though he didn't much believe me on the museum quest part.

"so you finally got fired of all things over that whole crush thing of yours on lillian," norman fathomed after my whole blog-era life story. that is weird, after all i told him, norman went back to the beginning of it all. i guess out of it all, it was the only part of the story he had any real context with.

i nodded. he then asked. "well has there been anyone to replace her, as the sole reason for your existence?" he made fun of my younger obsessive feelings towards the albertosaur goddess.

right, i hadn't mentioned my melbourne trip... i'd mostly focused on my new life in new zealand, not the vacation i'd been on, for what seems like years... ;P

"funny you should ask," i braced norman before telling him all about my recent dealings with lillian, and my financing her and my talent agent peter bond's current trip around the world.

"you my friend take teenage crushes to a whole new level!" norman marvelled. "after only one kiss... man, if i won't lose what little face i have with the world, i might consider laying one on you to get a trip around the world too!"

norman interupted our random wandering around the zoo, we must have done the whole thing 3 or 4 times... "want to go to my favourite spot in this whole place?" he asked.

"totally!" i answered.

norman led me into a section of the african rainforest building. "this is it," he declared stopping us in the middle of a neat but devoid of animals or displays area.

"okay," i said kind of disappointed. "and this place is so special why?"

"it reminds me of the good old days," norman said with a hint of genuine sadness. "back when the world was just you, me, and zendin. when the only thing that mattered was having fun... which seemed to follow you guys around."

i looked around unable to see it. "how does this remind you of us?"

norman too looked around, though clearly knowing what he was looking for. "wait for it," he urged. a minute later he finally answered, well sort of. "it reminds me of you, and the only thing you did well at the tyrrell."

"what was that?" i probed keen on the setup for a compliment.

i was of course talking to norman, i should have known better. "standing in a bunch of plants getting soaked!" just then the sprinkler system shot into action...

i suddenly followed norman's line of logic, as the tropical garden was misted. it was just like my old home in the tyrrell, the cretaceous garden. which of course had been an odd time for me. much like norman, i'd loved hanging with him and zendin, but i'd found work very unchallenging and depressing. my job was to stand in the garden and pretend to be a statue, and thus get soaked everyday during the dozen similar mistings of the garden...

norman started to chuckle when my expression betrayed my annoyance at this flashback. "what you don't miss this?"

like i had to answer.

norman then hit me with the most painful question of the day (for both of us) by accident. "so mr. international man of mystery, after tracking down the wayward girl of your dreams, you must have figured out where old zendin disappeared too?"

the look on my face must have betrayed the answer. "no huh," norman sounded like they'd cancelled x-mas. neither of us said anything for a while... what could you add really.

the third crucial member of our old gang, and he was missing. after a bit i added how i was pretty sure it was the primordial feathers who no doubt had made him vanish. yet it was of little comfort. the day in the olden days zendin went missing was the day both me and norman's childhoods ended... even if i'd had found him, it won't have changed that. just not knowing for sure what had happened to him added a sting to that memory.

we once again started walking the zoo, passing the "backgate" section once more. only this time i decided to stop and check out the sign display about the calgary zoo's long ago prehistoric park.

this first set of dinosaur statues dated back to years and years before the current version of prehistoric park, just after the great canadian dinosaur rush had ended...

despite the fact alberta's many great and numerous dinosaurs were enjoying fame elsewhere in the world at that time, you won't have known they existed living here. there were no museums or monuments to mark my kinds presence here millions of years ago, that alone that one of the greatest graveyards of our kind was to be found in the area. so a bunch of locals banded together and raised the funds to build a "fleshed out" park in the zoo.

sadly, none (well none but one) remain today, but man those old skool dinosaurs would have been worth seeing!

looking over the plaque they put up to commemorate this first long gone park, i noticed a very familiar name! the legendary fossil hunter and palaeontologist charlie m. sternberg, son of the great charles, more to the point the discoverer of my mother, was one of the main forces behind this first park!!! (his is the third name from the top... if you can't open it to see the big version). now i really wish more of this first park was here for me to see...

at least there was one last remnant of this park still standing. dinny the "brontosaurus", one of calgary's most famous landmarks. mind you he was installed later in this old park's history (well after charlie's involvement), but by the zoo's (and calgary's for that matter) standards dinny was one old trooper.

so to finish off my day with norman, i handed my camera off to a nice lady, and had this photo of the two of us snapped to remember the day... though the lady was very confused by two dinosaurs asking for their picture to be taken by another dinosaur. at least she took it in the end, even if she was very confused the whole time.

norman walked me up to the entrance at closing time, and we said our farewells... for the day.

we made it clear that no matter what, before i left town me and norman would meet up again. so i was hardly unhappy to leave...

minus missing half the zoo for my review, but i hope you'll take my excuse as a good reason to miss out on the rest...

next: one last surprise at the zoo...