a damage bench mark (the visitor part 9) (enemy! part 4)

only a few more days before my cousin larry has to head off to his audition with peter jackson elsewhere in new zealand. though i have to say initially larry's unannounced visit produced nothing but trouble, the last couple days i've been finding him far less of a JERK! and almost tolerable.

he still is a bit of an egotist, human hater, and general condescending to me, but compared to times past (especially when i bumped into him in vancouver) he is much more agreeable than i recall him ever being...

that having been said there are a large number of outstanding questions larry still hasn't answered since he arrived:

• why is he visiting me period (or as they call it here in new zealand full stop!)?
  

• when was he in drumheller visiting everyone at the royal tyrrell museum (my old home)?
  

• why was he even at the tyrrell (he hates museums)?
  

• how did he find out i was in new zealand in the first place (only 3 people know i'm down here!)?


• what movie is he auditioning for with peter jackson?

i was determined that today i was going to get the answer to at least one of these questions!


as we walked home from my current workplace the otago Museum (which we had just been exploring) i decided that the tyrrell was the easiest of these to pursue.

as larry and i entered the botanic garden (my current home) we'd entered into a comfortable silence walking. which to be honest is a little weird. normally in the past me and larry would have nothing but very UNcomfortable silences. if we weren't arguing about something...

i decided to risk this quiet truce. "larry could i ask you about the tyrrell?" i ventured as politely and casually as i could.

larry delayed... it was almost as if he were deciding whether it'd be better of him to answer or not... "of course cousin," he answered after a clear deliberation in his head.

alright we were in business i thought! "when were you there," i eagerly asked. i hadn't been at the tyrrell since x-mas last year...

"i popped into drumheller for a visit with my mom {known to most humans as black beauty the tyrannosaur} in july," larry answered.

that made sense. though larry has never been a fan of the confinement of museums he is something of a family dinosaur, and he did have a habit of visiting his mom at least once a year. that was the majority of the times i'd seen him actually in my life come to think of it.

"how is aunt black beauty?" i asked. i'd always gotten along fine with larry's mother (and my mom's sister).

"she is very well," larry responded smugly. "they finished some big renovations at the museum earlier this year, and my mother's display area was majorly upgraded."

the renovations weren't completely news to me. i'd seen the beginning of them back during my attempt to return to drumheller last year. aunt black beauty's area was majorly torn up at that point, but i had no idea it had been completed...

"that's great news," i acknowledged. it was good to hear that at least one of the tyrannosaurs at the museum was doing well. there was another i cared about far more though. "and how is... my mother?"

though i'm not sure he wished to express it, but larry's body language made it as though he had the satisfaction of making a kill during a hunt when i asked this question. an odd description i know, but i know my tyrannosaur body language (at least compared to a most humans!).

"she misses you traumador," he stated coldly. "and she was most distraught learning you'd moved this far away from her."

that cut a little deep. for a moment i was silenced by guilt. "is she really mad at me?" i ventured.

"saddened i'd say rather than mad. you know how perpetually melancholy skeletal dinosaurs are," larry corrected me.

it was true. fossilized dinosaurs being not truly alive were more an emotional imprint of their former selves, and as they are still aware that they've lost their bodies and minds tend to be sad about it...

guilt still numbed my head a bit. "other than my making her sad," i gulped. "is she doing okay?"

"yes," larry simply answered. "she would very much like for you to return to somewhere near drumheller though."

returning to north america really wasn't an option right now. i didn't have the money for it (i'd had to smuggle myself into new zealand as was the first time), and more to the point i'd be returning to the old problem of too many dinosaurs there that i had already fled.

desperate to change subject. "what about lillian?" i asked. lillian was one subject that already made me feel a little better. she's so dreamy..."she didn't happen to mention me did she?"

larry's posture once again showed he felt satisfaction like a kill, but his voice was somewhat angry and resentful. "lillian no longer works at the royal tyrrell museum. serves the absconder right."

"WHAT?!?" i thought out loud. i was unable to believe my ears!

lillian had been the museum's mascot for years! their star attraction... why in a million years would they get rid of such a magnificent specimen... (especially considering that curvy tail, those recurved talons, perfect teeth, and the body of a goddess... excuse me people of the innerweb i need to find a drool collecting bucket for a second)

i'd heard rumours before i was fired, that lillian might be leaving the museum. in fact it was my telling her about those rumours that ruined my asking her out way back in yesteryear.

and what did larry mean by absconder? what was lillian absconding from?

"yes the museum was," larry paused. for some reason he was considering he's wording carefully for some reason, and it wasn't to shield my feelings for lillian. "the museum was persuaded to consider more 'cooperative' albertosaurs to represent them to the public. lillian was too head strong and self-absorbed."

funny wording coming from larry. "self-absorbed" ha... i'd still say larry takes the cake for that one over lillian. though to be fair lillian was sort of a matriarch... oh sorry that is the tyrannosaur way of saying "princess" or spoiled girl. in a t-rex pack the alpha females (or royalty) are matriarchs.

"wait a minute you're saying the museum hired new albertosaurs to replace her? why would they do that?" i asked in disbelief. wait a second. though i didn't know it at the time i'd met her replacements... during my return to the museum i'd run into a very aggressive and rude pack of albertosaurs in the lobby. those must have been them. where else was the museum going to get a pack of living albertosaurs on short notice?

i pushed further confused by a part of larry's answer. "who persuaded the museum? not lillian?"

"the pack," larry instinctively whispered in a droning voice. i know he didn't mean to answer that because he snapped his head about and his voice became very calculated. "an outside party to the museum that very much has important dinosaurs interests at heart. something museums tend not to take into account."

"what outside party?" i demanded. "i've spent my whole life around museums. dinosaur heavy ones at that, and i'd never heard of such a group helping dinosaurs out."

"you're young still cousin," larry condescendingly replied. "you were never made aware of it's existence because you had not yet come of age. i can see you have many questions about this. which is good. it is why i have come to visit you."

finally larry was going to answer my biggest question. why was he here to see me at all!

that is he would have... had we not be drastically interrupted!!!

unbeknownst to us while we had entered the botanic garden we had been watched... no watched isn't the wrong word... we were being hunted...

we tyrannosaurs don't have the best bewaring instincts. in the cretaceous as the top predators of our environments (minus around water... we still had to be careful of giant crocodiles) we had little to fear... of course with the extinction everything's changed except our ancient instincts... humans can be very much an equal top predator to us... only more cunning and sneaky!

one of larry's actions in new zealand had angered a particularly dangerous human into action...

the germ-man had set out to lay a trap for me and larry in retaliation for larry's terrifying him the other day...

earlier in the day the germ-man had devised the most ironic of revenges. during the flood dunedin had a little while ago i'd tried to make up to the germ-man for eating his favourite dish by giving him some bananas.

"let us see lizard," he jokingly said to himself. "you ate one schnitzel, but gave me 5 bananas in return. i'd say that is one too many. i shall have to give it back to you."

only the germ-man could have devised a way to use a banana against us...

for you see once you've eaten a banana you're left with a peel... something i'd never have thought of. partially because i don't eat fruit under any circumstances (they make me literally sick in my predatory stomach), and also i never would contemplate turning food into a weapon.

we were about to learn one of the diabolical uses for fruit.

the germ-man had prowled the botanic garden all day waiting for us to pass by. in a different life he would have made an excellent tyrannosaur. patiently and contently stalking his quarry. savouring the anticipation of the perfect moment to strike...

the only problem with this is that we tyrannosaurs WERE the quarry! in that different life it would have been some poor ornithischian who'd have to worry. not us...

it just so happened that the perfect moment for the germ-man to strike was right as larry prepared to tell me his true reasons for coming to see me...

the germ-man of course had no perception of the ill timing of his attack. nor would he have cared. in fact knowing him he probably would have been twice as happy...

throwing his banana peel carefully into position the trap was set.

doesn't look like much does it. to be frank it isn't really...

unless you put 6 tonnes of weight balanced solely on one leg on top of it...

in which case something very much like this would happen...

i wasn't sure which was louder... larry completely destroying one of the benches of bench hill or the bellow of pain larry emitted when he hit...

needless to say it was just a lucky thing that no one had been sitting on bench hill... just imagine that same 6 tonnes needed for this equation to work in the first place running over a person!?!

larry though not seriously hurt fortunantly (we t-rexs are made tough) was somewhat stunned and disoriented after his tumble. certainly in no shape or condition to finish our conversation.

he staggered off with a minor limp to his clearing to rest off the minor injuries he'd recieved from the fall.

the germ-man who'd gone unnoticed simply enjoyed the whole incident unfold from his hiding place.

"wunderbar," he laughed. "those stupid lizards will never suspect, with their brains, that are tiny and small that this was my doing."

"if only there were some way i could share this most joyous of spectacles with others," he mused.

"ah but of course!" something in his wicked mind schemed. "with but one call, on my phone... oh my lizard friends i have only begun with you."

the germ-man cackled to himself as he ran off to enact his new plan... one that would have HUGE implications...

meanwhile i had implications from the germ-mans first stunt as was. my landlord ben the gardener was furious to say the least as the destruction of two of the benches on bench hill among other things. i got a call from him within 15 minutes of larry's falling, and him demanding to see me at the garden's cafe/information centre.

"do you have any idea how much those benches cost traumador?!?" he demanded and exclaimed at the same time. "what if someone had been sitting on them!?!"

"no idea, and they'd have been squished," i answered glummly.

"when i agreed to let your cousin to stay here you promised that nothing drastic would happen!" ben challenged.

"problems actually," i corrected. ben's face got really angry looking (in human body language... a lot different than t-rex... just pointing out i can read both species body language... can get confusing for me sometimes). so i quickly added. "but i can see this being a bit of a problem."

" 'a bit of a problem'. that's the understatement of the month," ben grumbled.

"traumador, do you have any idea how hard it is for me right now not to just chuck the two of you out of my garden?" ben pleaded.

"probably pretty hard," i tried to reassure him. i had to get him on my side right now!

"seriously though ben i swear it was an accident." i had no idea about the germ-mans involvement... yet... "larry just tripped. it'd be like kicking out all the little kids who fall over in the gardens and squish grass in the garden every day..."

"it's not that simple traumador," ben frustratedly responded. he was trying to be nice, but the 'gravity' of the situation was 'weighting' him down (i'm trying to 'lighten' this part of the story... get it ;p ). "even if i ignore the fact that the next time your cousin trips he could hurt or kill someone. i still have two demolished expensive benches to replace!"

than an idea popped into my peanut sized brain! "okay the benches i can help you with," i offered. "we'll replace them."

"on a security guards salary?" ben was skeptical.

"no a hollywood star's," i rebuttaled. "larry's the richest dinosaur actor in history. he can totally afford two new benches."

ben stood thinking about it.

"please," i pleaded. "it takes care of the problem he caused, and he didn't mean it. you should see the bruises and cuts on his back from the tumble. larry didn't do it intentionally."

than ben's face lightened back to close to his normal chipper happy self. "alright. so long as i have the money by tomorrow," he paused. "and tell your cousin not to trip anymore in the gardens! anywhere else, but if it's here i'll have to kick you two out traum."

great. so i now had to not only keep larry from being larry, but i had to prevent chance circumstances too!

that and now i had to tell larry i needed more money from him...

and i didn't get the answer to my question about why larry is here...

worse of all the germ-man had one more huge surprise in store for us!

to be continued...

waking a sleeping dragon (the visitor part 4)

so my cousin larry has shown up uninvited to visit me here in dunedin... the last thing i ever wanted to happen!

larry has caused some serious friction between me and my landlord. more to the point he has majorly jeopardized my being allowed to stay in this country through the department of conservation... this was all just during the first day of his visit!

i have at least 13 more days to go... then... or at least as larry claims... he is off to go audition for some new peter jackson movie (larry being the big hollywood star was in jackson's king kong), and will be out of my feathers as of that point.

larry hasn't told me why he wants to visit. typical really, what with larry being one of the biggest JERKS! i know...

i do seriously need to know more about his trip though. i've come up with a cunning plan to get information...

you see yesterday after all the "fun" with ben and agent hamilton, larry wanted to check out dunedin. rather than have even more "fun" i opted to goto bed. so showed larry to a nice spot a little ways away from the dell i live in.

it's now nice and early in the morning, and my plan is this... wake larry up, and in his sleepy state try and get him to tell me more about his intentions...

as i approached larry i realized this wasn't as easy a plan as it sounds. larry as a fully grown bull tyrannosaur isn't exactly the lightest of sleepers. i mean that in two ways. the first is that obviously he weighs a LOT! second as the top carnivore of the cretaceous (and easily here in new zealand!) he's not exactly conditioned to being weary in his sleep. only a fool would want to wake him up...

and i guess that's my cue... oh boy...

getting closer i try the safe route first. "psssst larry... larry are you awake?" i whisper some distance away. nothing.

"larry?" i try at normal volume. "LARRY!" i scream. he doesn't stir a muscle...

oh fun... this was what i was afraid of. no matter what volume i yell at him i don't think i could get wake him up.

i picked up a stick and threw it at him. i hit his nostril pretty much dead on. i'm reward with a slight sniffle from larry's nose.

it seems now to wake him my only choice is to get within the death zone, as it were. i'm going to have to hit him in the face...

he could easily gobble me up in his waking reflexes if i'm not careful.

creeping forward i pay close attention to whether my life is flashing before my eyes or not... the movies say that's a good way to see if you're dead meat or not. though i don't experience the flashback effect, i'm still not convinced of my not being dead meat...

as i get beside larry's great skull, and am penetrated by each laboured breath his massive lungs take, i brace myself for what could be my last action on this earth...

the moment of truth comes as i head butt larry beneath his eye (i'd have hit him, but we t-rexs have such short arms it'd have been like hitting larry with a pen...). his entire body suddenly surges to life as he awakes...

opening my eyes moments later i'm amazed that i'm still alive! larry simply raised his head to see what interrupted his sleep... rather then instinctively chomp down on the disturber... things have changed in 65 million years it seems!

"what do you want?" larry demands to know.

"it's time to get up," i tell him.

"very well," larry sleepily grumbles.

"larry there's some things i need to know," i spring on him.

he yawns with his colossal jaws, exposing the rows of rail spike sized teeth a reminder of the danger larry still poses to me and everyone else in dunedin. i'm rattled by the great clap of muscle and bone slamming back together he concludes the yawn. i start to regret my tact in this plan...

larry sensing my fear, and seeming to be aware of what i'm trying. "it can wait," he says groggily.

"why are you here?" i try one last time.

"to spend some quality time with a member of my family," replied larry.

i've never heard larry EVER refer to me as a member of his family. larry typically used to equate my small size, and preference to hang-out with humans as my being a sub-standard tyrannosaur. i know this because he told me several times in the past!

"many back home have grown concerned about you traumador. especially since your dismissal from the tyrrell," larry added.

"who?" i asked sceptically.

"your mother namely," larry replies sharply.

man larry has always been good at ruffling my feathers (even now after i've lost them all growing up). i haven't thought of my mom since my ill fated return to drumheller...

i forget my whole purpose of the wake up call with the reminder of my mother. larry senses he is gaining the initiative.

"not just her mind you," he carries on. "my mother black beauty, the daspletosaur triplets, and even lillian have asked about you."

larry has me dumbfounded. drowning me in my small brain with a sudden flood of homesickness. though i'd turned my back on dinosaur kind like it'd turned its back on me last year they are still part of many of my fondest memories...

"when were you in drumheller?" i asked longingly.

"just before i came here," larry responds lifting his immense weight into the air on his two pillar like legs. "i was visiting my mother at the tyrrell, when both her and her sister {my mother} wondered if i'd heard anything of you."

larry reminds me of my need for information. "how did you know i was here in new zealand?" i inquiry.

"many miss you at the tyrrell," larry dodged my question by straying back into nostalgia. he starts to walk around the clearing "i thought the most striking example was how the mosasaurs and pliosaurs in the bear paw gallery still howl every night expecting you to feed them."

"how did you know i was in new zealand?" i angrily repeat. there's no way larry would know about my feeding the marine reptiles in their exhibit unless he had been to the tyrrell. due to his movie stardom larry hadn't lived at the tyrrell very long, and that was well before my time...

larry holds his ground in not answering my question. instead letting loose his greatest weapon. "lillian sends her regards," i forget my questioning... again! lillian. there's a name i have thought of a few times as of late.

larry continues. "your mother hopes you will someday muster up the proper courage to mate with her," he starts to walk towards the path. "now come cousin. show me this new land of zea you have chosen to migrate to."

as we set off down the path i get furious with myself... not only did i not have any more answers than when i started, but now larry had gained the upper hand, and raised more questions.

was he telling the truth?

does everyone (that is the dinosaur everyones) back in drumheller miss me?

did lillian really want to say hi to me?

why did my mom talk to larry more than she ever has to me... her own son?!?

another thing suddenly dawned on me as we walked... we were walking!!! as in me and larry were about to walk out into dunedin... dunedin a city that had never ever seen a full grown tyrannosaur wander its streets...

well there was one up to this recent development... it was probably going to make yesterday seem like a much better day in comparison!

to be continued...

special treat

well people of the world wide web due to all the commotion and craziness of the countdown of doom i've neglected a key promise i made to you guys a while back. i'd hoped to be sure to get a vlog up every 25 posts or so, but if you were paying attention i've gone a few over that with no vlog.

now sadly i still haven't had time in my busy schedule (what with the new job, and figuring out what life in dunedin is REALLY about) to get a vlog done. however the crazy guys at prehistoric insanity (the nice people who make my vlogs possible) have posted the UNOFFICIAL royal tyrrell museum training video. guess who it's about...

that's right... this is the true story of how it was all those years ago i got my job in drumheller!

it is kind of a fitting thing for me to post right now. the museum is no doubt in the midst of gearing up for a new summer, and this will be the first summer in years i haven't been there!

fortuently i don't have time to get sad or homesick about that last fact.

so take a trip back into my past... the year was 2004...

securing the job...

with my big triumph of getting a job two days ago, life has significantly shifted for me, people of the innerweb. in most ways good. all but one that is. due to the new time constraint put on me by working at the museum, i have less time to deal with the last couple outstanding criteria of the government's.

time is still ticking, and just as a reminder to us all (but especially me!):

T-Minus: 4 days!!!!!

i actually am close to fainting looking at this number!

that having been said i've got half the criteria met as of this moment. all i need is one more signature (hopefully not too hard to acquire), and a home. now the place to live has thus far proven with research to be the hardest to get.

the only free of cost places are wild and natural areas which are under the protection of the department of conservation. meaning my endangered species directives kick in when i move there. as i don't have a natural habitat here in new zealand i can't move into any of these...

meaning i need to move in somewhere that costs money. i don't have any right now. however that's where i'm hoping my new job at the museum will help me. with a job i'll be getting money, and with money i'll be able to get a place!

so with that in mind i went into work for the first time yesterday. why i didn't post about that day you might ask. it was probably a more interesting day then my second... you'd be right people of the web wide world.

only i'd have to kill you if i told you the details of my training. as a security guard of the otago museum i have been entrusted with the safety and well being of all the priceless artifacts and specimens contained within it's premises. so if i told you all about my training i'd be exposing crucial details about the museum's defenses and weak spots... which i can't allow...

that and as i haven't worked since the eco centre i was really tired after the shift, and too lazy to write last night...

alright so the otago museum. it's about the same size as the royal tyrrell, but different dimensions (not as in the sci-fi sense of the word either). rather then being spread out all over the place it is tall. three floors tall to be precise.


standing in the lobby i don't yet feel this is my museum like the tyrrell did, but hopefully it'll grow into it...


still looking into the vast inners of the otago museum i appreciate the scope of my new task here. from this vantage point i can see ALL the galleries at once. there's no question how big this place is (tourist at the royal tyrrell always got confused as to where to go, and how big the place was due to haphazard layout in places).


it also makes my job easier as i can watch and guard the galleries ALL from the same area.


this has caused only one issue. i haven't seen a lot of the museum yet because in order to watch everywhere i can't leave the lobby...


though i have managed to see a little bit of what's inside. all of it is on the second floor. being the middle i can risk venturing a tiny bit into its galleries...





my first discovery in the entrance to the discovery corner was a globe of earth. not a bad first discovery... as i was about to move on something hit my tiny brain though...


a GLOBE! the first thing they had on display... wow is there some sort of code that museums have that their first display HAS to be a globe???


check this out... i might be onto something here!

this was the first thing that you'd see

when you entered the tyrrell's lobby.

craig used to play with me here when i was 2 years old...

(those were the days)

the eco-centre had one

as well greeting their

guests...

the globe connection... i'll have to look into this discovery later... very curious though!





elsewhere there's some really cool stuff on this floor all about the maori. they were among the first people to move to new zealand. they made a living off the ocean, and we've got some sweet examples of the tools they used to make this living...

they also have a FOSSILIZED skeleton of a moa. though it kinda looks like a dinosaur it is actually a giant extinct bird (which okay still technically makes it an advanced dinosaur, but not an old skooler like me... more a young wanna be!).

completing my quick inspection of the maori gallery was a model of a maori house. a thought entered my mind seeing this. maybe i could strike out a deal like i had at the tyrrell where i could live in the otago museum...

my supervisor this morning said that was out of the quest... unlike the tyrrell where i served as a display while living there, the otago had no such purpose for me... after all they don't have dinosaurs down here... i guess a long term goal could be to convince them that maybe they need one on display...

point is this is a pretty sweet place to work!

bound to be plenty more for me to discover... however i should stop using my puter here, and get back to watching the lobby!

also need to come up with a plan to solve my outstanding government criteria...

xmas tickles

well i may not have gotten my old job back, i still don't have a clue what the future holds for me, and being in drumheller is bringing up all sorts of memories...

at least i'll get some free turkey before i leave!!!

the museum was nice enough to at least invite me to their xmas party.

i've never really gotten what xmas is or what it's about. all i know is that the trees get really bright and pretty, and there's a lot more food about then normal.

the party was at the new place in town the quarry... the COOLEST name ever! though to be fair it is the farthest thing from a fossil dig i can think of. staffed by adam and his excellent crew, we tyrrellers were in for a night we won't forget soon... well unless their like me and have a brain the size of a peanut anyway...


i got to sit with my good buddy cam for dinner. i was really glad we'd sorted out that whole him being the one who fired me thing. it would have made things kinda awkward.

at one point cam went to put his arm over my shoulder for a picture. by accident he found my ticklish spot. everyone thought that my laugh was really funny...

it kinda set the tone for the night...

during my hanging with kirsta she interrupted the conversation we were having to make me laugh again...

before that we were having a chat about where other people from the museum were or what they were doing...

dan decided not to come to the party. mostly cause i was coming, and he was still mad at me for trying to eat richardo. have to make sure that i patch things up with him. me and dan go back a long way... i don't want him to stay mad at me forever.

craig had left the museum to head back to calgary to prepare to head overseas to new zealand. kirsta was really surprised i hadn't heard anything about this... i had been in BC for the last few months, and in exile before that... how was i supposed to know. though i wonder why he hadn't told me. he is kinda like my legal guardian and stuff...

krista thought my tickled laughter was very funny though, and that's as far too catching up on other museum people as i was going too.

lastly i caught up with brad... well brad 2. he's just not brad 1 is why i make the distinction. brad 1 was nice enough to give me my job 4 years ago, but then he left the museum (some said he just couldn't live with himself for some reason... i never did find out what it was cause people would always suddenly glare at me in the middle of the story... not sure why they'd do that... i didn't know the end of it!!!)

anyways brad was having a good time. like me he doesn't work at the museum, and was just there for the fun. he had heard about my "not being with the company" anymore... though that was a weird thing to say as it's a museum. not a company!

i told brad all about the events of my return. how i had no idea what i was going to do. it was becoming clearer and clearer that i needed to find a place without any dinosaurs so that i could be the only deal in town. everywhere in canada i'd been there were dinosaurs, and they were all trying to immigrate to drumheller which seemed to say that things were even WORSE elsewhere around here.

i told him about how while looking at the badlands the flatness of the prairies reminded me of the ocean for some reason. he said that was pretty obvious why... i just looked at him... then he remembered my brain size.

"well traum it's pretty simple. i think you were smarter just then, then you think you are. there's got to be a place over the ocean that doesn't have any dinosaurs."

wait a minute! brad was right!!!

there has to be somewhere over the BIG ocean that dinosaurs haven't been found or put in museums... but where???

just as i realized who i was going to need to see to help me figure out a new possible home for me suddenly brad reached over and hit my laughing spot.

"sorry man." brad apologized. "your laugh is just too funny."

The Return

well i know that i said i'd post a vlog every 25 posts... well this is techincally in that limit. just a little sooner then i figured. alot of stuff has happened this week, and the only way to communicate it easily i found is through a vlog.



in spite of everything that has happened i'm going to hang out here for a few more days. the museum is having it's xmas party, and cam and krista have invited me to join them at it. so i figure i might as well go. i have no where better to be at moment...

100th post!!!

holy smokes people of the web wide world... i've already made 100 entries in my blog!!!

it seems like just yesterday i started this thing, and now here i am a true veteran of the super information highway.

now i figured i'd do something special for this entry... well okay. my talent agent peter figured i should...

since i've been on the innerweb all i've talked about is what's going on in my life thus far... i thought this would be a good entry to take a look back at where i came from. this also seemed very fitting since i'm currently on route to drumheller to see if i can reconnect with this past.





hope now you have a better idea of why i'm in search of my dinosaur roots. i also hope that after all i've seen and done in my journeys these last 4 months they'll take me back in drum. now i'm a super qualified dinosaur...

i'm also planning on doing this "vlog"s more often then every 100 posts... hopefully like every 25 from here on in.

catch you in drumheller people of the innerweb!

the end of THIS thing

okay need to check out the field visitor center so i know what i'm talking about when i ask them for a job.

i'm thinking though what better way to attract people to a fossil display then with a dinosaur... even if they don't technically find us around here normally.

well for some reason there's a cowboy statue in front of the center. trilobite wrangler?

heading inside there was a bunch of fossil displays, and i figured best thing to do was check them out, and demonstrate my superior knowledge of the burgess shale

yeah no big surprises. they had a whole cabinet full of trilobites from mount stephen

a cool selection on other critters from fossil ridge. like the iconic marrella...

one of my favs though is the tentacled football leanchoilia...

they had a pretty small, but good selection of burgess shale fossils. all ones i knew about. so it would be easy to sell myself as both a palaeo attraction, but also expert.

there was only one problem when i went around the corner and bumped into their alberta and BC tourism displays...

there was a dinosaur in the center. not just that she was there from the tyrrell to promote the museum! now considering the circumstances we were both pretty civil. however this struthiomimus was very set on this job staying HERS!

well so much for that idea...

i guess i'm meant to goto drumheller. what awaits me there i'm not sure. hopefully a second chance.

all these attempts at first chances haven't been suiting me so well...

end of an era

hello there people of the web wide world,

well to make a long story short there are no more jobs in drumheller for dinosaurs...


i guess there really are too many of us here. so many that there are dinos lined up on the street all over town looking for work, and pestering tourists for money! i don't want to wide up like them.


having slept in my car last night i figure there's no reason to unbuild the nest i made in the back seat. i'm going to live in here a while. i'm not staying in drum though. i've decided i must try my luck somewhere else out there... i'm going on a road trip!

i'm a little scared though. it's a big world out there, and i'm just a small dinosaur. i've never been really away from the museum, and i'm not coming back to it either. this could be the beginning of a whole new life for me...

but betters can't be choosers... or was that beggers get to be choosers... or were choosers beggers?

oh hey! there is one bit of good news. all my friends at the musuem kirsten, christa, cam, and tyler they all pitched in and bought me this shiny (well it's not really shiny) new portable magic box. yeah with this toplab i'll be able to keep you on the innerweb up to date.

where i'm off to i'm not entirely sure... but i leave for it today

going down memory lane (laid off part 2)

for a minute i thought that today was all a horrible horrible dream... so like in the movies when their stuck in a nightmare i went to sleep. that way i'd wake up and everything would be back to normal...

instead i woke up to find that in addition to being laid off, one of the salamanders in the garden had pooped on me. that and i'd wasted my last day as an employee! man why do movies lie to me all the time?

hearing the annoucement over the PA that the museum was closing in 5 min i figured i should do the right thing, and as a new member of the public i'd have to leave the building. man what a march of pain that was... and i know all about marches of pain! i've worked at badlands sciency camp!


there was all the gang in the dino hall doing their thing. the thing that they were here to do. i'd always thought someday i'd get to do it with them. i mean hey i'm a dinosaur just like them why shouldn't i have been in the dino hall too? but i was too small, too dumb, and got there after all the other dinos had.

if only i'd hit my growth spurt, or had a bigger brain, or been born before the museum originally opened...

even my mom had nothing to say to comfort me... i know she only speaks when she has something important to say, but i think this would have been the time!


walking toward the exit i couldn't help but wonder what was going to become of me. i didn't just loss my job, but i also lost my home, and even more i'd lost my place in dinosaur utopia. this is where we still rule the earth. people come from all over to see us. i'd always thought someday it would be me that the little kiddies would walk up to, and have their eyes light up and scream "it's a dinosaur! the best i've ever seen!".

drumheller may be the dinosaur captial of canada, but even us dinos have to pay rent... and this valley's stuffed to the brim with us... i am going to have to see if i can get a job somewhere else... there must be a way!

keep your fingers crossed for me people of the innerweb... i'm going to need all the help i can get!

the END?!?!?!?!? (Laid Off part 1)

oh no!!!

i knew i forgot something yesterday! the museum was going to figure out what my job for the fall was going to be... and uh well this whole lillian thing kinda got outta hand... so much so that my hiding in sheer terror meant i missed the meeting about my job!

uh i'm not sure how to say this but... they FIRED ME!!!

it was horrible. cam stumbled on me while i was hiding behind the puzzle monkey tree... which by the way makes an excellent hiding place if ever you need to find one in the cretaceous garden. especially if being hunted by a large predator... where was i again... OH YEAH! FIRED!!!

so there i was hiding when cam walks up and is like "uh dude what are you doing here?" and i'm all like "hiding from lillian! keep your voice down!" and then cam says "uh dude. you were supposed to be at the meeting yesterday. you better come with me"


so i followed him into the museum lobby where he went over the meeting of the big cheeses...yummy... or i mean the big bosses (though in fairness their actually really small compared to most of the dinos in the museum... just bigger then me) who decided that they have enough dinosaurs, and that at this time there is currently no need for my services at the museum for the time being...

i don't i don't know what i'm going to do people of the interweb...

sanctuary (lillian part 4)

oh man...

i've been lying low in the cretaceous garden for like a day... hoping lillian can't find me... you can hear her stalking the museum (especially at night) from in here...

fortunetly i blend in very as you can see....


i think everyone is getting worried about me though... they've called my name over the PA a bunch of times... i just don't want to risk leaving here and getting eaten is all!!!

in all of this fisaco i can't help but think i'm forgetting something else that was supposed to happen yesterday... hmmmm what was it?

what happened? (lillian part 3)

hey there people of the innerweb...

i don't know quite what happened... but everything is no good!

well here's how i best recall it.

there i was finishing my lunch...

when i noticed lillian had returned from her lunch, and was back in her corner of the gallery.

so i was all like "hey here's my chance", and i marched right on over to talk to her.


i started to tell her how i felt about her. i thought it was going really well... she didn't ask me to stop or anything...


then i happened to ask about the rumours of her leaving, and suddenly SWABAMOO!!!... she got really angry and was like "what do you mean?!? me the star attraction leave? how dare you imply i'm expendable pathetic spec!!!"... next thing i know she is trying to KILL ME!?!


i got out of there as fast as i could!

now i'm hiding in the library with the magic box waiting to see what happens next...

chickened out (lillian part 2)

okay so i chickened...

but i had a good reason. the triceratops i was going eat with her smelt so good... i uh kinda started without her...


by the time i came out of my feeding frenzy lillian had already left for lunch...


have to come up with a new plan... after lunch!