Prehistoric Diaries- 1

Stephanie could feel the humidity lying heavily on the air. Her clothes stuck to her body as if they had been glued to her body except that instead of glue it was her own sweat and the archipelago's atmosphere. It was a very picturesque archipelago with the shining blue waters, clear blue sky, white sandy beaches and thick tropical forests full of interesting endangered animals. Some were native to these isles while the rest had been introduced by Shinchoku Co., her new employers. The docks were alive with activity as workers busily rushed around the boat which she had just gotten off to take various goods from it. All she had was a suitcase and a handheld bag, (all the rest of her stuff had already been transported to the islands). Stephanie was tired, her body ached and she had a headache. Two flights, (one to Singapore and then one to Auckland), and then a boat ride to the docks of the Nga Rara islands had left her not in the best of conditions.

A man stood at the end of the docks waving and calling to her. He was balder, pudgier, greyer and shorter than his younger brother but Bob Arthur heavily resembled her old boss, Gary Arthur. It was Gary who had sent her here. "It'll be a new start Stephanie. A new start away from Terry. What's there to lose?" She leant on the fencing watching the zebra graze on the grass in the exhibit before her. To say she was twenty-five and, supposed to be in the prime of her life these zebra and their neighbours at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park had been her life since leaving university.

"Friends, family…" A possibility of reviving her relationship. "I don't know Gary. Moving all away to New Zealand is a bit extreme." Gary Arthur was Head Keeper at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, in the north of England, and had become a virtual father figure for her, (even though her own father was still in full health). He had shown her the ropes, took her under his wing, comforted her when Terry stifled her ambitions, and after he had left her. The bubbly figure of Gary had been a huge part of her life. Last month he had come to her to tell her about a job in a wildlife sanctuary on some islands north of New Zealand where his older brother was Head Keeper. This Bob had asked Gary to ask offer any skilled keepers who wanted a position to rise in alongside a new start to send off an application. She had sent off and application, got accepted, (although she felt Gary had some hand in it), and now was having second doubts.

"Stephanie." He looked straight into her brown eyes ignoring the ostrich that was trying to peck him through the fencing. "You said that your friends and family wanted you to take that job." Her parents had virtually walked her through the application and interview stages while her friends had been trying to convince her to live in New Zealand for slightly different reasons. Melanie had mentioned something like meeting a young Russel Crowe to sweep her off her feet after Terry. "It's Terry isn't it?"

She sheepishly nodded her head. Despite what he did she still harboured feelings for him; half of the time she wanted to smash his face in while the other half of the time she wanted to kiss him. "Maybe moving to New Zealand will help you finally move from him?" Being on the other side of the planet should help me. Moving on would be far easier when he couldn't send her texts or phone calls pleading with her to take him back. At times she was convinced that moving to the Martian colonies would be a good option; New Zealand wasn't as far but it should send a clear message. Every time she thought she had moved on he would text and sending her mind spiralling into a concoction of emotions.

"Just put your bags in the back of the jeep and I'll show you one of the animals," Bob said as she walked to the end of the docks. Just like Gary he had a warm, smiling face. I get to see one of the secretive animals already? She had been given a week to settle in so she assumed during that week she would have a look at the world's rarest animals then. When she had finally got the job Stephanie had to sign a contract which forbade her from talking about any of the animals the wildlife sanctuary had until it opened to the public or risk a crippling lawsuit which made Greece's debts look trivial. According to this Shinchoku Co. it was because they had the rarest animals in existence and that announcing what animals they had could attract unwanted attention at a time when the sanctuary's security was still being developed. During her second year of university she had managed to do a month volunteering at a nature reserve in Zimbabwe, and she had seen the extreme lengths poachers had gone to hunt the rhinos. Although those poachers were driven out of desperation because selling a rhino's horn could feed their families in neighbouring Mozambique for a long time.

Could they have the rarer rhino species here? Could they have the only Javan rhinos in captivity? All of her trepidation had melted away to be replaced instead by excitement. "Thanks Mr Arthur."

"Call me Bob. Mr Arthur was my dad." Just like Gary. She climbed into the jeep's passenger side as Bob gently put her bags in the back of the jeep. When Bob climbed in next to her she realised that it was an electric jeep rather than a traditional one. He drove them past a wall of thick tropical trees full to the brim of chattering birds hidden among the lush foliage. Jutting from the tops of the green in the distance she could see the top of a huge white dome. Steph remembered going to the Eden Project a few years ago which was made up of several biodomes to house tropical and arid plants? It looked like this wildlife sanctuary had built biodomes for non-tropical animals. Bob noticed that she saw the biodome.

"Making them feel right at home. Most of our biodomes are empty right now. We have a few with animals living in them. Oh we also have an aquarium and an aviary." What was the point of having empty biodomes? "So Stephanie. My brother's told me a lot about you. All positive naturally. I'm sure you're going to love it here. We might even help you fulfil your potential here."

She smiled in response. How much had Gary told him? She wasn't entirely sure if she was comfortable with her new employers knowing why she never got past being a zookeeper instead of an animal behaviourist. To avoid further conversation about a past which she wished to forget she started to focus on the trees ahead. They whizzed past and seemed to get thinner and thinner until they passed into an open plain. "This area will eventually have animals living here." Right now the only animal life in the area was some birds flying out from the long grass of the plains. "Stephanie, how much do you know about palaeontology?"

"Palaeontology? Like dinosaurs? Bits and pieces but mostly from Jurassic Park," she laughed feeling awkward. It was amazing how little long dead reptiles had to do with looking after modern day animals.

"Never mind. You'll find out a lot, and I mean a lot, about palaeontology soon enough." The jeep trundled along making her feel even more awkward and confused. Gary could have at least told her his brother was odd. He suddenly stopped the jeep in the middle of nowhere. "Look to your right." She acquiesced to his request. Then her jaw dropped.

Standing in a field of ferns, and the occasional tree, was a quadrupedal animal covered in crocodile-like scutes except for the hindquarters which had short quills like a hedgehog sticking out of it. The head had two horns protruding from above the eyes and a third, far shorter, one on the nose. A red frill bedecked the head as a thick beak snapped up ferns. It looked like nothing which ever walked the planet but she recognised what it was immediately.

"Is…is that a Tri…Triceratops?"

"Yep. Welcome to the ultimate wildlife sanctuary." She watched the real, living, actually breathing dinosaur standing and eating in front of her. Bob sat beside her with a look on his face as if seeing a real dinosaur was the most natural thing in the world. She wondered if the first Europeans seeing a giraffe or a rhino had felt the same thing. This explained everything: the secrecy, the intensive interview, and the reclusive islands. All this time they had a Triceratops. "Is that your only one?"

"No we have seven more. That fellow is Charles. Triceratops, although we all call them trikes, live in small herds with only one male. If they don't have a herd they stay by themselves." Eight Triceratops. If they had Triceratops what else did they have? Brontosaurus? Brachiosaurus? Velociraptor? T rex? Bob started the car again and began driving. For virtually all of the rest of the trip she remained in a shocked silence.

"Bet you're wondering how we got a Triceratops?" Bob asked with a smile.

"Did you clone them or something?" That's how they did it in all the books and movies. Although that was in fiction, the thing she saw was real. "We would have cloned them but we hit a snag. Namely the international courts. We will eventually be cloning extinct animals because our way of getting them cannot produce stable populations as well as it being well…unpredictable."

Unpredictable? Bob parked the jeep at the end of some wooden structures with a sign reading 'Holding Pens'. Going through the centre of the holding pens was a sandy walkway which ended at two pylons adjacent to one another. A bit behind the pylons was a large wire-meshed structure which resembled a bird cage. A bird cage for a pterodactyl. "Our boss bought a secret diary of Albert Einstein as a collector's item. Instead of finding secret lovers or talking about his friends he ended up finding blueprints for a time portal. On a whim he put some money behind it and found out Einstein's blueprints were right."

"So he decided to use it to bring dinosaurs from the past?" Bob laughed and shook his head. "It can only go back twelve thousand years. It turns out we can't change the past so he's been using it to help palaeontologists, palaeoethnologists, and to bypass the cloning issue. Although we'll still use the portal when we can start cloning."

An actual time portal bringing dinosaurs from the past. Bob started the jeep again and the holding pens, and time portal, started to vanish behind a series of thick, tropical trees. All this was too much to take in. "How many animal species do you have here?"

"Forty-six species exactly, excluding the wild animals. Six of them are not extinct though and I think you would have only heard of three though. You saw one of them already." Forty extinct animals. She didn't speak for the rest of the trip although Bob made up for her silence. Not too dissimilar from Gary in that respect. He spoke of the animals that wildlife park exhibited saying a myriad of unpronounceable names. From what he was saying this wildlife park had an aviary and an aquarium on top of the biodomes. The aviary was probably for pterodactyls and she assumed the aquarium was for those big, aquatic reptiles that lived at the time of the dinosaurs, like those reptiles that people thought the Loch Ness Monster was. Plesiosaurus. Her younger brothers were big dinosaur nuts when they were kids. Tom's doing palaeontology at uni. He'll love it here. She would have to ask him about that, it'll be useful.

The jeep passed through a tall electrical fence, ('For show when we open' Bob claimed), into a series of interlocking streets with empty building scattered about. Street signs written in three languages were attached to the end of the empty buildings: Ammonite Avenue, Gingko Street, Pterosaur Street, Pangea Square. Pangea Square seemed to be the central of this area being surrounded by the only completed buildings including a stylised building looking like a safari lodge with the words Mary Anning Museum of Paleontology written in three languages above the entrance. Bob pointed out a café going by the name of Cretaceous Cafe which sold rich coffee in the morning and icy cold beer at night. Apparently coffee beans were planted on the islands in the nineteenth century which had a very distinctive taste. Bob went down John Hopkins Road and went through some fencing which had a sign reading Staff Only. There were four blocks of modern looking flats; one of these would be her new home.

"Which block are you in?"

"Morrison. 4/5." She was given a choice between Morrison, Hell Creek, Messel Pit, and Pierre Shale. Now that she had found out this was a park for dinosaurs she assumed they must be sites where palaeontologists had found dinosaur fossils. Bob parked outside Morrison block and helped her move her bags to floor four, flat five. Underneath the doorbell her name was printed on a piece of paper. "Oh I've got the flat to myself."

"For now at least. Most of our staff comes from the mainland each day which gives us islanders plenty of room." She unlocked her new front door with the set of keys she had been given while still living in Britain. Inside was lit by natural light from the Pacific sun which leaked through the windows adorning her new walls. Several cardboard boxes containing all her worldly possessions, which Terry hadn't pilfered claiming they were his when he left, sat in the centre of the living room in between a coffee table, sofa, and a battered TV stand with a less battered TV. She was pleased to see that there was a balcony which faced the afternoon sun with some nice deckchairs.

"I'll leave you to unpack," Bob said. He handed her a book. "We nicknamed it the bestiary. Contains all the info of animals and plants found on the islands, whether they be wild, extant, or extinct. By the way we've given you some food in your kitchen but there's a shop where you can buy stuff. If you desperately want something that the shop doesn't have you'll have to place an order and it should arrive within the week. Don't drink the water unless if you boil it as well. Well, see you. I have a date with some Hynerpeton."

She waved him goodbye wondering what a Hynerpeton was. Her head was still pounding from a mixture of the several hour long flight to New Zealand and finding out that not only that dinosaurs walked the planet once more, but that time travel, to twelve thousand years ago, was possible. Stephanie looked in the small kitchen for the promised food that Bob had promised. After scouring the fridge and cupboards she found several packets of pasta; a loaf of bread; a lump of margarine; various glasses of pasta sauce; some packets of dried milk; some tea bags; a packet of what turned out to be coffee, (possibly from the islands themselves); some fresh fruit; several bottles of water; some cereals; a jug of orange juice; and a can of potatoes.

"Just like when I was in university." A smile crept onto her face. All those days and nights with her friends joking over boiling pans of pasta and pings of microwaves. Better times before Terry, work problems, and having to move to the other side of the planet to escape both. And before dinosaurs. She was too tired to eat so she put some crockery and cutlery into their new homes, packed some of her clothes into a cupboard, and got her pyjamas on. Despite it being bright outside all Stephanie wanted to do was sleep. She closed the blinds in the bedroom which she had claimed for herself and closed her eyes. Sleep instantly took her.

When she woke it was as black as pitch outside with millions upon millions of twinkling stars shining in the night sky. Stephanie looked outside to see massive fruit bats flying out of the tropical trees in the distance. With the thick forest and big bats if she squinted she could imagine herself being millions of years in the past when dinosaurs ruled the world. Despite sleeping for several hours Stephanie still felt tired. Sleep took longer to take her this time. A clamminess had seeped into her flat after the sun had vanished making it uncomfortable. Luckily there was a ceiling fan and she drifted off into oblivion to the rhythmic whirs of the fan.

She woke again at half six in the morning feeling refreshed. Her long sleep must have prevented the jet lag from setting in, or at least delayed it. It was a beautiful morning with the golden sun gently rising over the green tops of the forest sending fiery waves across the sky. She had breakfast on her new balcony being serenaded by the calls of Pacific birds and the morning headlines being broadcast by TVNZ from her TV as old as the animals which the wildlife park exhibited. Wollemia trees swayed gently in the slight early morning breeze sending shining droplets of water from their branches after the early morning rains. In keeping with the rest of the country her balcony had some pots where dark green silver ferns were growing from which made her new home look even more beautiful. When breakfast was finished she changed into some loose fitting clothing to have a look at the 'bestiary'. Initially she had thought the one and a half weeks 'to settle in' were to do exactly that. Now she believed that it was to help get accustomed to the fact that she would be looking after dinosaurs.

The 'bestiary' happened to be a lever arch file split into six: wild plants, wild animals, extant plants, extant animals, extinct animals, and extinct plants. Prehistoric Park. It was a nice name. Eagerly she flicked through the bestiary to see what Prehistoric Park had in store for her. She hadn't expected there to be so many wild animals living on the islands: the rare Fijian flying fox, coconut crabs, banded iguanas, collared lorys, and even green sea turtles. However, there were some less than safe animals. There were two species of lionfish, a stone fish species, yellow-bellied sea snakes, and at times saltwater crocodiles had been spotted. Luckily the crocs were a rare sight and the snakes rarely went near humans. What really caught her attention were the forty extinct animals.

It was so exciting reading about the extinct animals. Unlike the entries about the extant or wild animals the ones about the extinct animals went into a tonne of detail about the world it came from, the history of its discovery, diet, and what lived beside it in the wild. It turned out that Prehistoric Park didn't just have dinosaurs. For every dinosaur species there were three non-dinosaur species, (although three of those lived alongside dinosaurs). She learnt so much in only a few minutes. Pterodactyls were really called pterosaurs, (Prehistoric Park currently had one), raptors were capable of climbing trees, fish evolved half a billion years ago. But the T rex as well. Stephanie had been transfixed by the photo of the Tyrannosaurus. An actual goddamn T rex. It was straight out of fiction. She wondered what it would be like to actually see…

There was a knock at the door and a call in a thick New York accent. She closed the bestiary and went to the door. A tall African-American woman was standing at the threshold in the green uniform of Prehistoric Park. At barely over five foot four Stephanie had to look up to speak to the woman. Stephanie noticed that she had a gleaming red ruby piercing in her nose. The woman had lovely long braided hair which elegantly slipped over her left shoulder. At a guess Stephanie placed her age around her own. "You Stephanie Rundle?"

"Y…Yeah I'm Stephanie."

"I'm Katrina, Katrina Johnson. Everyone calls me Kat. I live next door and we'll be working together." That took her aback. She didn't expect to meet a colleague this early. "Do you want to come in?"

"Sure. My shift doesn't start in a while." Stephanie moved to let her new colleague enter her flat. "Sorry for the mess. I haven't finished unpacking."

"Eh no worries. My place is still a pigsty." Kat sat down on the sofa and glanced at the bestiary. Stephanie hurriedly closed the door and sat beside Kat. It would be a good idea to cement a friendship with Katrina; not only would she be a good friend to have being just next door, and there was the added benefit of her working with extinct animals. Although she had been working with animals for years it required a huge new set of skills to work with extinct animals. Maybe I'll be sent to look after the T rex. "Kat which animal do we work with?"

"All of them." All of them? That couldn't be right. Normally keepers only worked with one group of animal. Not all of them. Her confusion must have been written on her face because Kat elaborated on this strange allocation. "Us two are being groomed to become Deputy Head Keepers. What's the point of hiring keepers from America and Britain if you can just get them from the mainland or Fiji? Tell me, what did you work with back in jolly old England?"

"Ungulates and ratites. And meerkats." Kat nodded. "You've worked with a diverse set of animals already. Us two my girl are going to be Deputy Head Keepers. Maybe something even better. Come on, I can tell you want to be more than a keeper." Gary did say there was a chance she could get promoted, and even became an animal behaviourist. Not once did she think it was strange that she was being hired to be an ordinary keeper on the other side of the world. After that they got chatting. Kat had been working towards becoming a vet until her dad got ill. Until she came to Prehistoric Park she had been working for the Smithsonian National Zoo. She said it was a petting zoo compared to Prehistoric Park. Stephanie explained how she had been working with Bob's brother; she opted to exclude the grisly details of her and Terry's now extinct relationship.

"The animals are fine here," Kat said. "The Anchiornis sometimes try and take my piercing sometimes."

"Those are the black dinosaur birds, aren't they?"

"Yep. Cute things but they'll try and filch everything they can. The Yi are fine though. They never come out during the day and they're shy as well. Sorry the Yi are the dinosaurs with bat wings that live in trees." How would she ever learn all these names? Bob was right in the fact that she had only heard about three animals living in the park, and even then she only knew about the mammoth through its woolly brethren. "Hey don't worry Stephanie you'll get the hang of all these names soon enough. You know what? Come swimming with me and my friends tonight!"

"What?" She had brought swimming gear at the bequest of her friends. Where the hell was this swimming pool? "In one of the warehouses by the holding pens there's this big pool that we're allowed to swim in because…ya know, the heat. Come on, it'll be nice."

It would be a good way to meet other people. "I have literally no plans. Yeah I'll go with you."

Kat was so happy that she hugged Stephanie in a hug which threatened to snap her ribs like some matches. She would be meeting Kat at the holding pens at nine at night which meant she had virtually the entire day to herself. After a quick foray to the shop for extra supplies she decided to head out into the park. Might as well make the most of seeing the animals without having to look after them. The notes that she had been given said that eventually a monorail would be made and, in the mornings and evenings there was a bus for keepers. Unfortunately for Stephanie she was too late for one bus, too early for the other, and way too early for the monorail. Not only that, jeeps were allotted only for the chief staff which meant she would have to go by foot. At least it was a fantastic day. The sun dominated a sky void of clouds and the humidity helped stave off the worst of the heat, although it did have an unfortunate side-effect of creating a muggy atmosphere. One of the first things that she had stocked up on insect repellent as a result.

She stopped off at the café that Bob had pointed out the day before for a few bottles of water and soft drink before she set off for her first look at Prehistoric Park. Nearest to Pangea Square was the Herptile and Invertebrate House which adjoined the massive Carboniferous Dome. The pushed open the heavy doors and was hit by heat. Strangely this house was hotter than it was outside. Only two species lived inside the house but she remained excited regardless. Inside the rare tuatara were housed alongside the extinct golden toad. The tuatara themselves seemed to be straight out of prehistory. Fitting for Prehistoric Park. Shortly after watching a tuatara sleep on a log for a few minutes she proceeded to spot her second extinct species. The amphibians sparkled in the light making them truly look like gold. What really blew her away was the Carboniferous Dome. As soon as she entered it Stephanie truly felt that she had ventured millions of years back in time. The air seemed so thick that she could bite chunks out of it. Buzzes from dragonflies as big as a seagull hung on the air as the insects flew around the recreated primeval forest.

It was idyllic. Everything around her to be something straight out of a novel and at times Stephanie had to pinch herself to remind herself that this was real. For just a few seconds she held her arm outstretched and one of the great dragonflies landed on her palm. The emerald of the dragonfly's exoskeleton glinted with its translucent wings sparkling with equal beauty. Strangely it felt so light sitting on her palm; lighter than any insect should be. Suddenly it darted off of her arm with a prolonged buzz. Everything else was equally amazing: the giant millipede, the mega-scorpion, the big aquatic salamander creature, and even the early Scottish reptile. After the Carboniferous House she paid a visit to the two mugger crocodiles, then the aviary. Kat was very correct about the Anchiornis: they were cute. However, the cuteness was short lived when one tried to steal the bracelet her grandmother got her a few years ago. The pterosaurs Prehistoric Park had proved to be more promising, (if only because none tried to steal anything from her). Each of the pterosaurs was larger than any flying animal alive today. She felt so privileged to see them nosing their way through the sand after food.

Nine o'clock seemed to come in no time. Stephanie had only managed to look round the aquarium, the early dinosaur Nyasasaurus, some strange herbivorous reptile which lived alongside Nyasasaurus, and the mixed exhibit of Megalonyx and Glyptotherium. Before she knew what was happening she had quickly gone back to her new home, made a quick dinner, and had set off again looking for the holding pens. Under her clothes she wore her swimsuit which made going to the holding pens uncomfortable. The mugginess of the air mixed with the heat of the Nga Rara islands which all were trapped under her swimsuit. What made matters worse was that she had got lost twice making her more anxious. By the time she had found the correct route to the holding pens she was feeling unbelievably hot under the collar. Thankfully by the time she had reached the holding pens the sun had started to vanish behind the horizon which eliminated a source of the relentless heat. Her feet kicked up the sand which comprised the flooring of the holding pens.

"There you are," a recognisable voice said. Kat walked up to her. "I was worried you wouldn't show. The others are coming soon." Kat walked her past the wooden pens until they reached the famous warehouse. Kat typed a code into the keypad by the door which then opened with a loud metallic pop. "The portal was supposed to be in here until the powers that be thought it was safer to have the current holding pens. We still use it sometimes." There was nothing in the warehouse bar two pylons and silvery webs. One of the web architects scurried under their feet as Kat led her to a door on the right side of the warehouse. When they walked through the door they were bathed in coolness and blue light. It was refreshing.

"Check the pool if there's anything in it," Kat said. A chill came over her. The last thing that she wanted was the Loch Ness Monster popping out from nowhere. When she told Kat that nothing was in the water the taller woman stripped off to a black and white bikini before diving into the water. "Come on Stephanie! The water's refreshing."

Timidly Stephanie stripped off to her black swimsuit. Thanks to Terry she had become self-conscious of how she looked. She had a freckly, heart shaped face, wavy chestnut hair which lightly rested on her shoulders, brown eyes which matched her hair, an hourglass figure, and a scar on her stomach from a motorbike accident several years ago. She never felt comfortable about her appearance with Terry; her scar was ugly; she was not overly skinny; her hair was not the right colour; she was too freckly; her nose was the wrong shape; her breasts was too small; she was too short etc. Instinctively she placed a hand over her scar. "Don't worry Stephanie, mine's bigger."

Kat turned around revealing a thin scar running down her back from the right shoulder to her left hip. "Falling off quad bikes in the Rockies is very painful. Would not recommend." Kat dived underwater and shook her long hair as she re-emerged. "Dive in!" She did and cold furiously hit her. It felt fantastic. She couldn't taste any chlorine on her lips. Stupid. This is where extinct aquatic animals come through. Three people came through the door in various states of disrobement. One was a Hispanic woman in her late thirties with short black hair. Another was a Caucasian man younger than she was with dirty blond hair tied into long dreadlocks, a hairy chest, and short brown stubble which covered the bottom of his square face. The final person was a Korean man around her age with short hair, glasses, and a triangular face. Almost instantly they all jumped into the pool.

"They better not have another one of those lake monsters in here again," the Caucasian man said shaking his mane of hair. He had one of those stereotypical surfer accents.

"Stephanie checked for us. You won't be missing any feet today," Kat laughed and splashed him with water.

"So you're the new girl," he said looking at her with green eyes. He held out his hand which she took. "Marcus Breznivoff. Another limey and another keeper." Kat leaned over to her. "Three of the head staff are Brits. Amelia Kanda is the Behaviourist so get in with her. She also rescues the animals. She's great, do anything for anyone. Bob you've met who's great. And there's the joint Head Vet Suzanne who's…"

"A hottie," Marcus interjected. "And you're a dick and misogynistic," Kat laughed splashing him again. "Marcus is a ranger."

"Elizabeth de Santa," the woman said. "I'm one of the computer engineers. Worked with Graham who runs the systems to set up Disneyland Seoul. Hence why I'm here now."

"I'm In-Jung Kim but I've been known to go by the name of Jungi. I'm one of the vets. I managed to get here through a mixture of sheer luck and being recommended by the Head Vet at Seoul Grand Park. So Stephanie, how did you get hired?"

"Oh my boss is Bob's brother and managed to direct me to this place," she said sheepishly. "Then let me direct you to these guys!" Marcus yelled pulling some beers out from his rucksack on the side of the pool. He proceeded to hand them out and luckily they had screw lids. It was cold and felt nice on her lips. With the pool and icy cold beer it made her feel like she was in heaven. The others splashed each other as they drank their beer.

"Have you had a look at the park's animals yet?" Jungi asked.

"I few. I couldn't have imagined anything like this before. I managed to go into the aviary earlier and my god it was amazing. Like that pterodactyl, sorry pterosaur, deesungaripterus."

"Dsungaripterus," Kat corrected. "You don't pronounce the d…" She splashed Marcus when he made a crude reference. "You'll learn how to pronounce them soon enough." If I ever. "Any of the animals caught your eye so far?"

"I haven't seen it yet but when I was little I liked Stegosaurus so I liked the look of that…woohoosaurus is it?"

"Wuerhosaurus," Elizabeth laughed. "Her spikes are something dangerous though. I saw what she did to that dummy…Don't piss that one off. Personally mine's the Crassigyrinus. Mostly because it also bit Marcus's foot off."

She snorted and felt the beer bubbles tickle her nose. Each of the others said their favourites, (Anchiornis for Kat, the Tyrannosaurs for Marcus, and Edmontosaurs for Jungi). They spent the next few hours drinking, getting increasingly intoxicated, and talking all things Prehistoric Park. If the portal opens during a mission the time travellers have either come back empty handed or brought back an unexpected animal. If you see Hiroshi Komon call him Hiroshi, not Mr. Komon. Phil West the palaeontologist will blame the other palaeontologist for calling the Edmontosaurus Anatosaurus, but if you ask Alfred Steiner he'll blame Phil. Trikes enjoyed eating eggs. No one knew why Hiroshi had hired Kimberly and very few people liked her. In contrast everyone liked Amelia, Jean Duvoir and Phil. Don't say that Jean is Algerian, he's French-Tunisian. Dakotaraptors could tell when a new keeper was there and would jump from tree trunks to catch them off guard. Also lock the gate because they can use their snouts to open it. Only women, or the Head Keeper and Head Ranger, could go near the mammoth matriarch because of human hunters in the past. That made her sad. At that moment she realised she was drunk.

Wrapped in a towel she clumsily walked back with Kat to their respective apartments. After fumbling with her key for some time she finally succeeded in getting it into the lock. "Thanks for tonight Kat. It really made me feel…make me feel welcome."

"No matter. Hey! Elizabesh," (Kat was slurring her words from drink) "told me that when you start there's gonna be anosher misshon. For a big crocodile…Purussaurus. That's it…"

Notes:

Like before say if you like this one. If yes I'll continue it. Also with the suggestions for Phase Three please limit each request to one specific animal. It ensures that the animal that you definitely want rescued is rescued that way. These are the planned missions for Phase Three so none of you end of up requesting something that's already planned:

1. Brachiosaurus

2. Koolasuchus

3. Steller's sea cow, great auk and possibly one other aquatic species

4. Various moa species

5. Helicoprion