Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur (4 page)

Paleontology comes from three Greek words and means “the science of ancient being,” and paleontologists are men and women who study the history of past life by fooling around with fossils, usually the petrified bones of animals who died millions and millions of years ago.

“Okay,” Wacko said at once, “where is the thing?”

“He is not a thing,” Jacob Two-Two said angrily. “He is my pet and his name is Dippy.”

“Ha,” Wacko said. “Lead us to it. Or
him
,” he added, winking at the paleontologists.

Dippy happened to be taking a snooze in the sun, his green humped back heaving like a mountain with each breath and his snores resounding like thunder.

“Does he bite?” Wacko asked, retreating a step. “Scared?” Jacob Two-Two asked.

“Certainly not, you little runt.” Then Wacko turned to the three trembling paleontologists. “Go ahead, men. Get on with it. I’ll just climb that tree and watch from there.”

So they got out their equipment and extension ladders and began to crawl all over Dippy. Dippy, stirring awake, yawned. The paleontologists leaped off him and ran for their lives.

“Come back at once, you cowards,” Wacko called out from his perch in the tree.

Grudgingly the paleontologists crept back toward Dippy. They measured his jaw. They peeked in his ears. They took his blood pressure. They listened to his heart. “If I didn’t know any better,” the first paleontologist said, “I’d say he was a dinosaur.”

“He certainly looks like one,” the second paleontologist said.

“And measures like one,” the third said.

Wacko slid down the tree. He pulled his hair. He stamped his feet. “But he can’t be a dinosaur, you idiots. There hasn’t been one alive on earth for sixty-five million years, give or take a year or two.”

Wacko and the three paleontologists conferred. They consulted books. They studied charts. They appealed to their computers. Finally, Wacko was ready to pronounce. “We have,” he said, “in accordance with the facts and our unrivaled scientific knowledge, come to a conclusion that cannot be disputed. Dippy is either a hoax or a figment of Jacob Two-Two’s imagination.”

“What do you mean, a hoax?” Jacob Two-Two’s father demanded.

“Well,” Wacko said, “how do we know he’s not a giant elephant wearing a Halloween costume?”

“What’s a figment of the imagination?” Jacob Two-Two asked.

“I mean, and I’m speaking scientifically, you little squirt, that you made him up in your head and he doesn’t really exist. ”

“But here he is,” Jacob Two-Two said. “Here he is.”

“Here he is, only if you are eight years old, maybe not doing so hot in the second grade, and have not had the advantage of my celebrated intelligence.”

“Dippy is a dinosaur,” Jacob Two-Two said, “a genuine
Diplodocus
.”

“Which only goes to prove that you’re just a bit dippy yourself, kiddo.”

Suddenly Dippy raised his huge neck and began to roar. Teeth now as large as bananas flashed in the sun. He opened his mouth wider and sent out his long wet pink tongue. Wacko and his helpers stumbled over each other, reeling backward.

“It’s plain to see,” Wacko hollered, “that this freak of nature, this beast ugly beyond compare, is a menace. We’ll have to make arrangements to remove him from here.”

“But how can you remove a figment of my imagination?” Jacob Two-Two demanded.

Ignoring Jacob Two-Two, Wacko turned to his helpers. “I have decided that he isn’t a figment after all, but a hoax. A fraud. A vile attempt to trick honest scientists. I will advise the prime minister that he is to be exterminated. We will return with airplanes and
use Dippy for target practice. Why, we’ll bomb the beast into oblivion.”

“Oh, no you won’t,” Jacob Two-Two said. “Oh, no you won’t.”

CHAPTER 7

fter breakfast Dippy seemed depressed, very depressed, so he and Jacob Two-Two didn’t set off on their usual gallop. Instead they sat down together in a clearing, Dippy lowering his head to the grass so that it was just at Jacob Two-Two’s height.

“The professor’s nutty as a fruitcake,” Dippy said. “I am so a dinosaur. Not a hoax. Not a figment of your imagination. But a
Diplodocus
, just like you said.”

“Dippy, you can talk! You can talk!”

“Of course I can talk, but you mustn’t reveal that to anybody else. Or next thing I know they’ll expect
me to go to school or get a job.” Dippy shed a huge tear.

“Today is my birthday.”

“Many happy returns. How old are you, Dippy?”

“Sixty-five million two hundred thousand and two hundred and twenty-two years old. I can talk and I can read, but I can’t write.”

“Oh, my, aren’t you ashamed? I mean, at your age?”

“Please, don’t
you
start criticizing me,” Dippy said, shedding another tear. “You’re the only friend I’ve got in the whole wide world.”

Jacob Two-Two hugged Dippy and kissed him on the cheek.

“How could I be expected to hold a pen or a pencil in these ridiculous hands?” Dippy said, raising an enormous claw.

“I see what you mean.”

“No, you don’t. The truth is, I’m an airhead. A real bubble-brain.”

“Me too,” Jacob Two-Two sang out. “Me too.”

“That’s why my species has been extinct for sixty-five million years, so far as I know.”

“Everything’s going to be okay, Dippy.”

“No, it won’t. I wish I were still frozen in that block of ice.”

Dippy explained that he had been a mere babe when that slight earthquake in Kenya had dislodged him from his sixty five-million-year-old prison, shooting him up from far below the surface of the earth, through the steam jet, right onto the chest of Jacob Two-Two’s father.

“My good luck,” Jacob Two-Two said.

“But possibly not mine. This is the wrong age for me, Jacob. The way I see it, the future is in computers and I can’t even hold a pencil. Professor Kilowatt is right. I’m a freak of nature. Ugly beyond compare.”

“No, you’re not, Dippy. No, you’re not. In fact, I think you’re handsome.”

“Do you think they’re going to use me for target practice, Jacob?”

“Not so long as I’m here they won’t.”

“I’m willing to put my shoulder to the wheel, but who would hire me? In order to even apply for a job as a messenger boy I could no longer gallop about stark naked. I’d have to buy a suit and tie. Gosh, Jacob, do you know what that would cost? I mean, it would take hundreds of yards of material. I’ll bet they couldn’t
find anything to fit me even in the outsize shop.”

Dippy began to sob again. It was amazing. Jacob Two-Two had heard the expression “weeping buckets,” but he had never actually seen it before.

“And I’m always hungry,” Dippy moaned. “I’m just not getting enough to eat.”

“But Dippy, my father brought you two station wagons full of rubbish only yesterday.”

“I know, I know. I don’t blame him. Having me around must be very difficult for him. I think it would be best for everybody if I just ran away.”

“Oh, no, Dippy. Please don’t. Please don’t.”

“I like you, Jacob. I think you’re terrific.” Dippy blushed a darker green. “But sometimes I wish I had a girlfriend.”

“Aw, who needs girls,” Jacob Two-Two said, irritated.

“It’s okay for you to talk – you’re only eight. But I’ll bet when you get to be sixty-five million-plus years you’ll be interested in girls too.”

“It’s no use brooding about it, Dippy. You’re the only dinosaur left on the planet.”

“Maybe yes and maybe no.”

“What do you mean?”

“One day when everybody in the house was out and I was still small enough to slip through the door, I sneaked into your father’s library. I found a picture book about Canada, and there were all those high, high mountains. If there are any of us left I figure that’s where they’d be hiding out.”

“Oh, you mean the Rockies out in B.C.,” Jacob Two-Two said.

“B.C. Right, right!” Dippy began to beat the earth with his forelegs. “B.C. is where I come from and B.C. is where I’m a-heading for. Yippee for B.C.!”

“Dippy, you’re getting things mixed up. I know that in other countries B.C. stands for the years before Christ, but in Canada it stands for the province of British Columbia, which isn’t quite the same thing.”

“It’s a good sign, though, isn’t it? B.C., B.C. If there are any of us left, that’s where they’ll be.”

“Please stay here with me, Dippy.”

“I’d like to, Jacob, honestly. But if I am the last of my species it just wouldn’t do for me to sit still and wait to be blown to oblivion.”

“What are we going to do, Dippy?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m a pea-brain. Thinking is your department.”

“Don’t worry,” Jacob Two-Two said without conviction.

“I’ll come up with something.”

CHAPTER 8

ven as the two friends were deliberating, events beyond their control were already taking shape in Perry Pleaser’s office in Ottawa. The prime minister wasn’t feeling too hot. He had just returned from a disastrous national meet-the-people tour. Out there in Vancouver, he had plunged into a crowd in a shopping mall, saying, as was his habit, “Would anybody like my autograph? Or possibly some of you would like to kiss my hand? Go ahead. I don’t mind.” But when the people stepped forward it was to throw rotten eggs at him.