What's coming through the swamp over there?... Would you look at that! Another chapter done. Just for the record, this is the halfway mark for the Skull Island ecosystem I'm currently covering. Also, I need to come out and say that this chapter does have some "scenes" of predator action that might be a bit strong for some readers. Although it's totally natural, I may well even increase the story's rating a notch because of this one. This chapter took quite a bit of time to complete, but I know at least it won't be found lacking to my faithful readers. :) As always, enjoy.
This chapter has been revised slightly.
As night's blackness started to merge to gray, the still Skull Island dawn began to throb with the calls of sunbirds, tailorbirds, finches, Carrion parrots, kingfishers, drongos, and a host of other feathered creatures, all proclaiming to the world both ownership of their territory and the start of a new day. The dawn chorus also involuntarily served as a wakeup call for many other creatures, whether they liked it or not.
One of these was a Turturcassis, an 11-foot hunter of the rivers that looked a good deal like a cross between a monitor lizard and a plesiosaur. Sleeping on a grassy sandbar for protection against nocturnal predators, he opened his brown, cat-like eyes and raised his tubular head, groggily gazing without appreciation at the view being slowly inundated with light.
Feeling like sleeping for a bit longer, he lowered his head again and closed his eyes, trying his best to doze off. But it was just no use with all the raucous birdcalls penetrating the air, and he resigned himself to wakefulness, opening his elongated jaws to reveal teeth that were shaped like leopard claws and just as sharp.
Besides, this was the perfect time for mosquitoes to be active, and they were also doing their part to keep the big reptile awake with their loud buzzing and painful biting. The normal-sized kinds like tiger mosquitoes he could handle. It was the giant species like the crimson Spinaculex, or the ebony Black's giant mosquito, sparrow-sized insects only found on the island that were the worst, and naturally quite difficult to stand.
With no hope of getting more shut-eye, he decided to rid himself of both assaults by re-entering his true habitat, awkwardly rising onto his legs and turning to face the water. Several frogs leapt out of his way as the reptile briefly shambled through the thin grass like a beaver before reaching the water's edge and gracefully sliding in, ready to go hunting.
Like so many other aquatic creatures, although the Turturcassis was slow and clumsy on land, in his river domain he took on a dramatic new grace, tucking his legs against his sinuous body and swimming smoothly with his keeled tail. Feeling hungry, he decided to go hunting and catch himself some fish or even better a turtle or two for breakfast. Since he was adept at maintaining an almost constant body temperature, his body burnt energy fairly quickly as a result, meaning he needed to have a full meal every other day.
As he swam, his eyes pierced the still-dusky water, looking for suitable prey. There was a school of hunchbacked small fish called Firesides that looked like dwarfed sturgeon, colored scarlet on the back and upper flanks with a white belly before him, but they were too small and swift to bother with. The next group of fish the reptile encountered was a school of tiger barbs being attacked and harassed by a pair of Rapanatrix, eel-like fish with gorgeous tiger stripes of green and black and yellow, using their large eyes to focus on a target before chasing the barb down and grabbing it. Like the Firesides, the tiger barbs were too small and fast to make a meal, but the 22-inch long Rapanatrix were.
The Turturcassis rushed forward with mouth open, intending to grab one of the green-and-yellow fish in his jaws. But his prospective catch proved to be quicker, rolling out of the way, twisting downward, and successfully making her escape. Not ready to give up, the big reptile pursued for a couple yards, but let the fish go to seek other prey.
Continuing on, he rose to the surface to take a breath, then submerged again in one fluid motion. While diving, he suddenly caught sight of some clown loaches returning back to the cover of some large cracks in the riverbed after a night of foraging. At a foot long, the whiskered black and orange fish would make great prey, and the Turturcassis dove at them from above, jaws open.
A clown loach desperately dived into a silt-lined crevice, with the reptile hard on that fish's tail. There was no escape today though, for the predator rammed his tubular head into the opening, grabbing the big loach and impaling him with those sharp hooked teeth.
Backing up, the Turturcassis turned his catch headfirst and swallowed it in two gulps, then shoved his head down another crevice, grabbing another trapped loach and eating it in turn. Although he was clearly an elegantly supple creature in the water, graceful as an otter and able to adopt any position, not to mention swim faster than any man, he wasn't really built for chasing down fast-swimming fish in open water. Instead, they needed to either be easy to chase down to begin with or trapped in some way, and that was where his long head and serpentine neck really came into their own.
Sparing the rest of the loaches, the Turturcassis rose back to the surface, taking another breath as he knifed through the water. The pair of clown loaches had taken a bit of the edge off his hunger, and when he dove again, he stayed near the left bank and the shallows, scanning for his main, and favorite prey. At heart, he was a specialist hunter, and had evolved to stalk turtles. There were other large fish swimming around now, tinfoil barbs, Bloodfish, the large minnows called sharks like bala sharks, Segnix, which looked so much like hunchbacked, purplish pinecones, Naomi's nutcrackers, kissing gouramis, and climbing perch.
Although he did stop to grab a kissing gourami or two, and couldn't resist the perfect chance to chase a school of tinfoil barbs into a small inlet where he caught one of the large trapped fish, the turtle hunter generally ignored his finned neighbors now and swam on. Early morning was a time when turtles usually left their sleeping shelters on the riverbed and headed to basking sites like fallen logs and sandbars, absorbing the heat they needed to become energized for the day.
Soon enough, his patrol paid off, and finding a black marsh turtle swimming towards the bank he shifted gears, easily chasing it down. The turtle did what came naturally, hiding all his vulnerable parts in his 10-inch long shell, but it was no use against a Turturcassis. Grabbing the turtle across the shell, he surfaced again, taking another breath as he swam into another shallow inlet. There, he briefly put the black marsh turtle down, cocking his rectangular head as he regarded his fellow reptile.
A turtle's shell is a wonderful and ancient piece of evolutionary work, one that has served them well since at least the Triassic. The shell is covered with hard skin and large scales, with no delicate tissues that can be damaged or hurt. Both the carapace and plastron are fused together at each side in a structure called the bridge, so thick and smooth an attacker can't gnaw off any thin parts with its teeth, or even gain a grip on the slippery shell.
Finally, a turtle's upper shell forms a perfect arch, one of the strongest basic designs in the world, allowing it to withstand incredible pressures and bear up against hard blows. The shell is reinforced even further by the turtle's ribs, which are completely fused to the inner shell and act like girders, making it even more durable.
So it isn't surprising that most predators encountering a turtle quickly find out that although the waddling reptiles might be easy to catch, attempting to make a meal out of one is an exercise in futility, and give up after some ineffective gnawing and poking. If they are to successfully get into a turtle's mobile panic room, an animal needs to have jaws that are either very strong or very mobile. Turturcassis had opted for the latter kind.
Opening his mouth, the predator shoved the tip of his bottom jaw-which could open as far as 80 degrees-into the right side of the hind opening of the marsh turtle's shell. Hooked teeth pierced a hind leg and the lower torso, dragging out live flesh to be swallowed. The turtle soon died from blood loss and the shock of being eaten alive as the Turturcassis ate, using his toothy lower jaw to scoop and hook out turtle tissue, eating flesh and guts and bone, scraping out as much as he could while his upper jaw held the victim in place. When his teeth couldn't get out any more, he used his tongue, covered with rough barbs like a cat's, to rasp the last morsels of turtle off the bone.
The meat tasted great. A meal of turtle always seemed to be much more pleasing to the taste buds and thrice as nourishing as an equal amount of fish would be. Five pounds of meat was hardly enough for an 11-foot reptile though, and the Turturcassis moved on, leaving the empty shell to the carrion whelks and crabs.
It was two hours past dawn now as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the Turturcassis contracted his pupils in response. Taking another breath, he dove again, deciding this time to check a shallow part of the river, which was basically a small marsh full of reeds that was ahead and to his right. As he entered the shallower water, he felt his back become exposed to the air and the reeds part as his sleek body wove among them. He saw and slid up to another turtle then, a Malayan snail-eating turtle attractively marked with ivory on the skin, crunching a snail in its thick jaws.
With a 6-inch long shell it was also small, but that wouldn't stop the lithe reptile from eating it. This time though, when the turtle swam away, he let it go. Thanks to their snail diet, Malayan snail-eating turtles had a taste to their flesh that the Turturcassis didn't really care for, and he'd only consider eating one if starving.
As he wove through the reeds, he raised his head to take another breath, submerged again-and found excellent prey indeed. To his delight, his eyes caught sight of a Skull Island snapping turtle, a cantankerous beast descended from tortoises that stalked fish and water birds in the weedy and reedy shallows. The snapper, a younger female, had been lying in weight for egrets and other wading birds when the Turturcassis had discovered her, and whirled around to face him, razor-sharp beak open in a crystal clear threat.
Most of the time, this show of weaponry discouraged predators. Even Venatosaurs treated Skull Island snappers with respect and caution, generally being wise enough to leave them alone. Those who didn't received a deep, nasty gash from that beak. Turturcassis was a different matter altogether.
Sliding up to the defensive turtle, the tawny reptile appraised the situation. He jabbed at the turtle several times, drawing back as the snapper parried with snaps of her own powerful beak. Suddenly the Turturcassis adopted a position above the turtle and slashed downward with his hooked teeth. The turtle responded in kind, but her jaws only closed on water as her own momentum carried her forward for a few instants. Using that momentum to his advantage, the larger predator struck again in an upside-down position and bit into her right hind leg.
He righted himself, jaws still firmly clamped onto the 10-pound turtle's leg, which was now upside down herself. Despite the desperate struggles, the backward curving teeth ensured that there would be no escape. Heading out of the reeds and just below the surface, the Turturcassis swam several dozen yards to a sand spit nearby, the water parting around his live trophy like it was some bizarre figurehead.
Climbing up onto the sand, he got down to his remorseless work, tearing off the leg he was holding and swallowing it first. Then he plunged in again, ripping out and at the tail and hips. As the turtle died, his amazingly flexible neck and bullet shaped head came into play once more. His scaly neck twisted like an eel's body and he repeatedly plunged his whole muzzle, then face, then entire head into the domed shell, bolting down turtle flesh with all the greedy, bloody finesse of a feeding vulture.
When it was finally over and the predator had rasped off as many remaining meat scraps with his tongue as was possible, flies were buzzing in a thick cloud, crawling over both his now crimson head and a gory, newly empty turtle shell. Many a human's stomach would've turned at the sight, but the Turturcassis felt good and content. He felt about halfway full now, needing only one or two more decent meals of living turtle to be satisfied.
He wouldn't get them lying on the pale sand still, and the blood would also attract dangerous land predators like Venatosaurus soon enough. So he shambled back to the water's edge, and there proceeded to rinse his now bloodstained face off, shaking it several times and even wiping it on the sand. Then he slipped back into the emerald water, cruising back into the middle of the river where he now swam in a methodical sort of yo-yo fashion, scanning the bottom for turtles feeding, then swimming at the surface for a bit to look for turtles which were basking, paying special attention to the banks and creek mouths.
There were other predators working the river too now during the midmorning. As the Turturcassis rose to take another breath and take a look around, a school of almost diamond-shaped Ghoulfish, rust-colored on the top half and colored like welded metal on the bottom, thought his rising toward them was an attack.
So they hightailed it upward and forward, their flight being violently interrupted several seconds later by a great SPOOLSH as something covered with feathers smashed through the surface into the group. Instinctively backpedaling, the Turturcassis raised just the top of his head above the surface, relaxing as he saw only an osprey winging up from the river, twisting the Ghoulfish to face into the wind. A gray heron watched unimpressed.
Staying at the surface, he rounded a bend in the river, scanning with his dark eyes and smelling the air- and then saw a delightful sight. Perched on a fallen log on a small sandbar were three shapes like enormous pancakes. The lean reptile knew what those were. Asian soft-shell turtles, huge and wonderfully defenseless in shells that were more like leather shields. Submerging slowly, he stayed near the bottom, keeping track of where he was in relation to the basking log. Being careful not to give himself away, he patiently stalked the soft-shell trio, not making even a ripple or a dark spot where there shouldn't be one.
The turtle stalker covered the distance, getting closer and closer. Although the Turturcassis could certainly chase them down underwater, turtles were even easier to catch on land, and that's were he meant to take these three by surprise. Just fifteen feet away, the soft-shells finally noticed him when he had to take a breath, and vaulted off the log to scramble for the river a yard away. Taking a hard turn around the shorter left side, their attacker was among the three as they started to get up speed in the water and scatter.
The Asian soft-shells were much less impressively armed than Skull Island snappers, and picking out the largest turtle, a male with a shell almost two feet long, the Turturcassis swooped down and expertly bit off the animal's head.
Within seconds, the blood had attracted Killer-eels and Driscoll's shingled catfish, who ravenously tore at the bleeding neck stump while the tawny killer, seeking to hang onto what was rightfully his, quickly swam back to the little sandbar with his kill. As his head broke the surface, the mooching scavengers stopped, leaving completely when the turtle's body was put down on terra firma.
This time, the Turturcassis didn't have to use his teeth or rasping tongue to extract turtle guts and meat. His teeth could just cut through the rubbery shell of this species and he ingested everything. It wasn't going to be a solitary lunch on this occasion though, for a two-foot Carrion centipede, braving predators and the risk of drowning, swam the short distance from shore to tug off smaller pieces of turtle flesh and eat them. With its venomous fangs and painful bite, the Turturcassis knew better then to directly challenge the big bug, and resorted to merely growling as a way of giving voice to his possessiveness.
Halfway through his soft-shell meal, a Brahminy kite showed up as well, boldly swooping down and swiping loose shreds of meat or stray bones with meat attached. Sometimes the bird would even cheekily land on the sand and swiftly rip off a hunk from the kill, expertly avoiding the angry turtle-eater's jaws.
When the Turturcassis was done, almost full now, he turned around and just as before washed his face at the water's edge before plunging back in, leaving the kite and the centipede to suspiciously share what few scraps remained. He felt good, not in any big hurry now as he slid through the emerald water, schools of small fish dancing and parting before him.
Patrolling the right bank, he came across a herd of fifteen Malamagnus, and regarded them with interest as they grazed on waterweeds and lilies like reptilian moose. Some also were eating their way through an especially reed-choked pool where a small creek joined the river, opening it up again at the same time so other aquatic creatures could use it. Even with his somewhat unrefined powers of intellect and thought, the Turturcassis at least dimly sensed that the walrus-sized beasts sure seemed to have a more immediate effect on their surroundings than the rest of his animal neighbors.
At almost a ton, the giants were far too big for him to even consider attacking, and the only time he could ever expect to feast on Malamagnus flesh was if he got lucky and found a dead or dying one. For their part, the almost totally submerged herbivores watched him through their dull, blank eyes with only casual interest, knowing instinctively that he was no threat.
Instead, the Turturcassis had arrived to hunt for a strange sort of camp follower, one that happily ate the huge amounts of manure Malamagnus and other herbivores produced every day. Known as Dirt turtles, they were a simple gray-brown in color, with 6-7 inch shells, and one could always count on finding at least four or five of them in the company of Malamagnus.
And the Turturcassis didn't even have to bother with searching the Dirt turtles out among the herd, for a cow Malamagnus suddenly lifted her tail and did what big herbivores who take in a lot of fiber do, as fish rushed forward to feed on the manure. Even better for him, seven Dirt turtles suddenly rushed in from all directions. Their hunger made them blind to danger, and in one fluid motion, streaking between two cows and curving on his side as he whipped around a startled young bull, the predator was on the scene, grabbing a turtle as the spooked Malamagnus stampeded a couple dozen yards away.
Carrying his prey to a large flat rock, he decapitated the turtle and as before, plunged his muzzle in to remove what meat he could, then used his hooked teeth and raspy tongue to pull out the rest, bolting it like an alligator in satisfaction. He came back again after finishing, once more briefly stampeding the nervous Malamagnus as he shot for another Dirt turtle like an arrow, grabbing the shelled reptile as her brethren fled for a second time. Once again, the turtle also met a grisly and painful fate on the flat stone, with two shells left now for the carrion whelks and flies.
This time though, the Turturcassis didn't return for another turtle or decide to continue his tireless search for more upriver. After eating several dozen pounds of turtle, he was finally good and stuffed. Switching directions, he began to swim downstream in an even lazier manner then before, feeling the warm sun as he swam only two feet or so below the surface, scanning the bottom for anything noteworthy. When he breathed, raising only the top of his rectangular head above the surface, he saw barn and Pacific swallows swooping for insects in the air, and racket-tailed drongos, ash-gray birds related to starlings, sallying forth from their perches on the bank to hawk for larger insects, cracking them in their beaks.
While he was enjoying a pleasing sense of well-fed well-being now, he still never got complacent about the fact that there were other predators in this river system, and kept his sharp eyes open in case any predator big enough to kill even him was about. Hearing a fairly loud crunch below him, he cautiously dove, finding to his relief that the sound was just that of a Papilio, a bulky, elongated 5-foot fish with long teeth and wide, attractive-looking fins that looked almost like butterfly wings, crunching a large, seven inch-long Jack's red crayfish she'd ambushed from cover. Leaving the strangely beautiful fish to her meal, the Turturcassis rose to breathe and carried on.
Swimming near an undercut section of the bank, he then suddenly saw, lightly sleeping in the shade, three male Piranhadon. Turning tail, he wisely fled as fast as he could, but although they were aware of and interested in the reptile's sudden presence, the 14-to-19 foot fish had all eaten well recently and made no move to pursue.
After realizing that he wasn't being chased, the Turturcassis calmed down, and then decided to search for a place to bask in the sun. A big log was too thin, and a mudflat didn't feel right to him, but when he came across a partly sunken ruin that might have been a major shrine, he gracefully slid up onto the exposed, gently sloping roof.
Walking to a depression worn out in the center, he flopped on his stomach and stretched himself full length on the smooth granite, blissfully broiling in the tropical heat and kick-starting his metabolism. He wasn't just the only creature interested in using this ruin as a basking site, and a Malaysian box turtle carefully stuck its head out of the water, taking in the scene before going under again.
Then, astonishingly, his carapace broke the surface as the turtle crawled up onto the granite roof and parked himself a little ways from the Turturcassis. Equally amazing was the fact that although the Turturcassis saw and heard the turtle so near, he only looked at him and made no move to attack. Like all box turtles, the visitor was able to enclose every part of his body, preventing even a Turturcassis from eating this species, so maybe that was the reason he went unharmed.
But when a black marsh turtle warily climbed joined the pair of reptiles, she too wasn't attacked. Neither were another black marsh turtle and even a tasty behemoth of a Malaysian giant turtle when they came to bask with their natural enemy. By the time an hour had passed, there were nine turtles sharing the same fifteen square feet of rock with the Turturcassis in a bizarre and spooky truce as he sunned and rested in the golden light.
Like a man contemplating the dessert display after a good meal at a restaurant, the turtle killer couldn't resist looking at all the tasty turtles sharing his space and fantasizing about bolting their rich meat. But nor could he eat another thing. And in some vague, instinctive way, the turtles seemed to recognize the same state.
No one can say for sure how prey animals know that a predator is "off duty", and can even be closely approached. Maybe it's just the different look in its usually intense eyes, or the calm, nonchalant demeanor it's showing. Perhaps it's because the predator is choosing to blatantly expose itself instead of adopting a deadly serious posture and stalking. And maybe it's even picked up by a sense very close to ESP.
Whatever the case, the turtles sensed it strongly enough about the Turturcassis, and like wildebeest with lions, penguins with leopard seals, elk with wolves, and fur seals with sharks, knew he was currently harmless. Only if he shifted position or had to snap at a pestering giant mosquito was there any action on their part.
As he became hotter, the huge reptile panted, feeling the sensation of turtle meat stewing inside him. When the heat finally became too much for even him, he got up and shambled back into the river, accompanied by plops as he dispersed the turtles. Diving into the cool emerald depths and scattering a school of Morsel fish, 2-inch long silver fish with four or five mud brown saddles on their backs, he had a good drink, then decided to patrol his territory and refresh his scent posts, making sure all the while that there were no intruders.
Like other male Turturcassis, he had a strictly defined territory, each encompassing about three miles of river and wetlands, while solitary females passed through at will. Done with hunting, he ignored all the fish, neopedes, Malamagnus, and turtles he encountered, and with the sun so bright, most predators would either be resting or had no chance of ambushing him in the bright water.
Several hundred yards away from the sunken shrine, he turned left, and crawled onto the bank. He carefully smelled and listened for any danger first. Detecting none, he approached a small, low, 2-foot mound of thick mud and water plants. Then he did a strange thing, turning around, backing up to the mound and frantically wiggling his splayed reptile hips over it for several seconds before pulling away.
Two special glands at the base of the tail produced a sharp, almost cologne smelling waxy substance that he had just rubbed all over the scent mound. This delivered a strong KEEP OUT message to any other males considering entering his domain while sending an enticing invitation to females. And since it was the breeding season for the aquatic reptiles, it was especially important now that he maintained the mounds.
For about the next hour and a half, he kept at this important activity, going up onto the bank, warily looking around, then backing up onto yet another mound to rub his hips over it and so replenish his scent mark. If the scent mound itself was in less-than-perfect condition, the Turturcassis would go back into the shallows and use his lower jaw like a shovel to scoop up a big slab of mud, drop it on the site, and then use his chin and muzzle like a crude trowel to roughly shape it. After washing his mouth out, the new mound would usually be firm enough by then to scent mark.
As he worked his way towards the upstream edge of his territory, he naturally put even more work into making sure the message was understood, paying special attention to the mounds near the mouths of creeks and inflowing rivers where another male could invade or a female might be resting. So far he hadn't seen another member of his kind today. But as he arrived near the border of his territory, he saw an unwelcome sight.
It was an adolescent male on the bank, and even worse, he was eating one of his turtles! The Turturcassis wouldn't stand for that, and with a malevolent hiss, attacked the intruder. Looking up from his half-eaten turtle, the younger male fled into the water, where he crash-dived as the older animal pursued him, bubbles rising as he growled underwater.
Furious, the Turturcassis chased the other male for a good 50 yards until he was past the border of his territory, than let him go. Being a practical creature and a little bit hungry again now, he turned back to the forgotten small turtle, and finished off what the poaching adolescent had started. After waiting for a while to make sure that the other male wasn't coming back, he entered the river again and went downstream.
There were many creatures resting in the cool shade now, barbs, Bloodfish, Ghoulfish, gouramis, and neopedes among others as the Turturcassis passed by. The dark shapes of three great cormorants could be seen gliding through the water nearby as they chased and caught members of a school of half-grown bala sharks, while a Rapanatrix joined in. At the left bank, there was a small splash as a Skull Island egret plucked a harlequin rasbora from a passing school, and when the reptile rose to breathe again, he saw a sudden movement as a Skull Island hawk, covered in beautiful cerulean plumage with a silver-gray belly, swooped hard at the edge of a grassy bank, coming back up again with a brownish-yellow Serkis' frog in his talons. No matter what the time of day or temperature was, predation and killing never stopped on this brutal isle.
As before, he scrupulously refreshed his scent on every mound, skipping only one when he saw that a Zeropterx, one of the huge flightless terror birds with a beak like a battle-axe and as tall at the hip as a grown woman, was drinking and bathing very near to that site. Since he wasn't trying to get himself killed, he stayed away and moved on.
Finally, after tending to all of his thirty-two mounds, he reached the downstream border of his territory, finding nothing noteworthy there but a female's day-old scent. Exciting, but she wasn't there now, and the Turturcassis swam half a mile back upriver to find a safe place to rest. He found it on a small, low island covered with grass and crowned by a wide, low-growing hibiscus shrub. So, legs sprawling, he climbed up onto it, lurching over to the shrub and parking himself in its cool, sweet-smelling shade.
There, safe from big predators, he dozed away the rest of the afternoon, going out into the sun when he wanted to, and going back to the hibiscus' shade when he felt too hot. The only problem of course, was the cursed huge mosquitoes that pestered him, but he stoically ignored them as best he could.
Occasionally, he would get some measure of sweet revenge by twisting his serpentine neck and snapping up an unwary bloodsucker or two. Colored a shining dark blue with brownish wings and feathery hind legs, a buzzing vampire which would later be dubbed the Sapphire imp mosquito flew close to his head one time too many and had her career cut short with a snap. A Black's giant mosquito that whined near his ear dimple received the same sentence.
As they always did around this time of day, dark clouds swept over the river, and without further ado rain poured down as if they'd been sliced open. More or less comfortable in the cover the hibiscus provided, the Turturcassis casually watched the falling rain, and listened as it struck the river like falling pebbles. The rain felt nice and cool, and the lean reptile blinked his eyes as it landed on his head, using his tongue to lick water off the leaves and stems. The water tasted great, and just as good was the fact that it dispersed the pestering mosquitoes. With them gone, he finally could take a real nap.
While he slept, the storm continued for an hour more, then stopped as the clouds drifted away. As the sun became lower in the sky, but was still brilliantly, fiercely hot, the Turturcassis suddenly caught a scent in his tropical daybed that gave him a major wakeup call. Female alert, female alert, it said.
Leaping to his feet as best he could, the Turturcassis charged out of the big shrub, through the grass, and elegantly slipped into the water.
At his nearest scent mound, a 9-foot female, dirty yellow in color, had only her head out of the water, slowly moving forward as she sniffed the alluring cologne left behind. On seeing the larger male coming at her, knowing she was a stranger and in his territory, she whirled back into the deep water and faced him.
There, keeping her jaws clamped shut and pupils contracted to show she had peaceful intentions; she raised her head above the surface and bared her long throat in a submissive gesture. Even if she was a female, there was always the chance that a male's love of his territory might be slightly greater than his love for a potential partner, and a painful, raking pounding could be the result. It was important then, not to do anything that might irritate or unnerve him. Appeased by the respectful display, he took a more relaxed stance, ignoring a group of Udusaurs swimming by.
It was his turn now, and he produced a musky smell from two chin glands, hoping the female would enjoy the new perfume. She did, carefully going up to him and nosing his jaw in pleasure. He had her, and now the Turturcassis dove under the yellow female, blowing bubbles as he moved along the underside of her long neck and then at a right angle across her chest, paying special attention to the sensitive armpits. She liked the feeling, and he did this over and over for a couple minutes.
Then they both went down to the riverbed, the male leading. Disturbing a young Sepulcro, they faced each other again as they stood on the bottom. In a bizarre behavior, the male suddenly made a sideways movement with his lithe neck, biting the water to his right when it was fully extended. His dance partner did the same thing, only biting to the left. As they did this, the female's eyes suddenly widened and she stopped, looking at something behind the male.
Turning his head sideways, the Turturcassis saw another male sneaking towards them, clearly wanting to mate with the female himself. Just the mere sight filled him with the deepest kind of rage and possessiveness, and he immediately exploded off the bottom, rushing the stranger at full tilt with hooked teeth bared, his cat eyes filled with hate.
Bracing for the challenge, the stranger opened his own mouth, and they grabbed each other's jaws when they collided, preventing the other from biting. Hanging on firmly to each other, both males then went into a series of death rolls like a pair of crocodiles, crazily whirling around like a piece of woodwork being turned on a lathe.
Water sprayed and frothed as the two males rolled, the female watching from a respectful distance. Disturbed by the melee, a Swamp-wing, a bizarre gray-black frog looking like a cross between a bat and an African clawed frog, leapt from the mossy tree branch he'd been using as a perch, gliding and spastically flapping to cover.
Then the two males separated and glared at each other, snapping their jaws and biting the water at the surface. The standoff was broken when the Turturcassis charged the stranger again. Faking an attack on the right flank, he tricked the strange male into turning to the left, exposing his side. Then he smashed into the challenger in a cloud of bubbles, grabbing the other male's neck and biting down.
Desperately, all thoughts of mating gone now, the other male twisted and lunged, trying to break free as his deadly serious opponent attempted to tear out his throat. Wrenching loose, the stranger fled from the fracas as fast as his keeled tail could move him, bleeding and wide-eyed.
Still pursuing, the Turturcassis drove home the message by diving on the stranger and with a savage dart of his head, used those hooked teeth to rake him deeply along the spine. Totally frantic now, the ex-challenger put on even more speed. The territorial male let him go, satisfied now that he wouldn't be coming around again after a thrashing like that. Even reptiles can remember negative experiences.
Watching for a bit, he returned to his female spectator, and they got back to the last part of their courtship, completing it without any interruptions this time. Then, the female swam to the surface and swam into the shallows, the male right behind her. She arched her keeled tail, the male mounted her, and in fifteen seconds the deed was done.
After that, the pair returned to the deeper part of the river, a herd of gaur impassively watching from the other side as they drank. For a minute or two, the pair swam alongside each other, then drifted apart to resume their solitary lives. In two week's time, the female Turturcassis would lay a clutch of eggs in the sand.
Now the shadows were getting longer as the sun approached the horizon, and the Turturcassis' pupils dilated to catch more of the light. He rested at the surface for a bit, tired out from fighting and courting, shedding the stress in the sinking sun. Once he felt refreshed, he decided to go turtle hunting again, since his efforts had made him hungry as well.
The brilliant green water was darkening now, but the reptile could see through the twilight like it was still broad daylight. As was his custom, he was looking for another big kill, always more economical than having to spend more effort eating several smaller turtles. On a whim, he went up a large creek and entered a small, flooded swamp, half-sunken trees rising out of the water.
There were plenty of algae and water plants growing around here, and the Turturcassis knew that sooner or later, he'd encounter what he regarded as the most delicious-and hugest-turtle of all. As he slipped between tree trunks and moved with a serpentine grace around or through obstructions, the tawny hunter suddenly heard the sound of something cropping aquatic plants nearby. It was a big reptile, but this time it was no Malamagnus.
Rushing and curving in a burst of speed, the Turturcassis came up on exactly what he'd been anticipating, a green sea turtle. Normally creatures of the ocean, for some reason a population of green sea turtles, perhaps seeing an unexploited food source in the abundant deep-growing river plants, had gone and taken up residence in the largest rivers. There, they grazed on plant life, basked at the surface, and laid clutches of eggs on isolated sandbars or beaches.
Their shells and bulk protected them from most of the river's predators, even the venomous neopedes, but not Turturcassis. Seeing the fast-coming predator with his big cow eyes, the 400-pound green turtle fled, putting on a deceptive turn of speed for such a normally placid animal. But he only got about forty feet away before the even faster Turturcassis was upon him.
A green sea turtle's skull is almost the size of a large man's fist, and is a solid, fused lump of bone, even stronger than ours. That head can't be retracted like that of other turtles though, so it was all too easy for the onrushing Turturcassis to come in from the left, open those flexible jaws incredibly wide, and bite the green's head off.
Swallowing the whole thing in a few convulsive gulps, he watched as the huge turtle literally stopped dead in the darkening water and just floated. Coming back in, the turtle hunter grabbed the sea turtle's left fore flipper and dragged it through the river, searching for a place to eat this feast.
All the blood had as usual attracted those annoying Killer-eels and shingled catfish, but this time in truly big numbers. If he didn't get this turtle on land quickly, he might lose a huge amount of the kill. They might even, in the heat of their splashing feeding frenzy; decide to go for him and strip him to the bone, making it a serious matter indeed.
There was a sort of large pile of broken rock not too far away, which in turn had gathered a crude latticework of logs. On reaching it, in an amazing display of strength, the Turturcassis hauled both himself and his 400-pound catch seven feet up the sloping side, resting on the flat top. Scavengers couldn't strip his meal here, and he immediately began gorging himself as the flaming sun began to sink past the horizon, starting with the fore quarters.
As scavenging insects joined him, and fish swirled around his perch to snap up what bits fell into the water, the Turturcassis ate of his kill for almost three hours into the humid night. It wasn't just the meat and entrails he enjoyed, but the large amounts of pea-green fat that gave the green sea turtle its name, especially under the carapace. Thick, warm, energizing, tasty fat. He didn't even care that this time of day was when all the mosquitoes were really active, and of course repeatedly biting him.
Finally, after bolting down maybe two-fifths of the enormous turtle, the Turturcassis was so stuffed that he sensed another bite would've made him hurl, and stopped. After cleaning off again in the dark water, then taking a drink and a quick dip, he sluggishly returned to his kill, where he laid down nearby and loosely curled up, the moonlight shining off his supple body. Secure from predators and wonderfully stuffed, he slept. Counting the rest of the turtle he had left to eat, he wouldn't be tempted to hunt again for another two days.
In the late evening, the reptile was woken up from his meat stupor by the slow, cautious wing beats of a group of eight Pugbats arriving. With their sharp teeth and lethal bacteria in their mouths, the buff-pink flyers were hunters of not only small animals, but also young, badly wounded, and sick individuals of larger species such as Ligocristus and Sylvaceratops.
Although they were just a mere eighteen inches long, with 3-foot wingspans, they could use their needle sharp teeth to cut large blood vessels, and the virulent bacteria in their mouths-a German study would later find that there were no less than five different unique species, all deadly- caused shockingly rapid blood poisoning and even heart failure after entering the bloodstream.
As a healthy adult male in prime condition, the Turturcassis was in little danger from the antagonistic winged cynodonts. He stood his ground and belligerently hissed back all the same though. Besides being hunters of both big and small game, Pugbats would scavenge too, as long as the animal had died fairly recently and the meat was soft enough to quickly tear. The green sea turtle's remains met those criteria just fine, and that was precisely why the mammal-like reptiles had showed up.
Even with eight animals and expandable bellies, the flock wouldn't really take that much meat from the turtle, each animal needing only about a pound or two of meat at a sitting. Still, the Turturcassis wouldn't tolerate thieves, and as the Pugbats swooped and hovered around the turtle kill, he growled and hissed at the scavenging cynodonts, shambling around and over his meat as best he could in his overstuffed condition.
Annoying as they were, it was difficult to get the Pugbats to take his threats and halfhearted attacks seriously when he was feeling so full and warm and comfy. Nor was he any good at moving quickly on land. If he'd been hungrier, and able to move around over the cracked rock in a quicker fashion, then he'd be able to do a better job of driving the flyers away, snapping and hissing and trying to bite their ugly bulldog heads off or snap those hunched spines.
Even better, the Pugbats were smart thieves. The reptile's brain was too small and undeveloped to comprehend what "smart" was as a concept. Yet he did appreciate that the miniature gargoyles had an irritating strategy of having a few members of the flock bait and tease him, leading him a short distance from his meat, while the rest would land around it, gulping down bloody hunks until he came back and chased them off.
After several rounds of this wild goose chase, the Turturcassis decided he just didn't care anymore, and flopped back down on his rotund stomach panting, letting the delighted Pugbats eat and bicker, hopping like frogs around his partly eaten green turtle. Over the next ten minutes, the horrid little hunchbacked flyers ate as much as meat as they could without compromising their ability to fly, and then took off one by one. Going back over again, the rightful owner took a few more bites himself, then went back to sleep.
During the early hours of the morning, the Turturcassis was woken up a second time by another rainstorm, this one extremely powerful and sending out huge bolts of lightening with air-shaking booms of thunder, which lasted for about an hour and a half. But he just retreated to the water, where he laid between the crumbled rock and a log, dozing while feeling the rain pelt his back.
Once the storm went away, he went back up to his original bed, falling back into sleep. The Turturcassis stayed this way until the sun started to come up and the birds began to sing, at which he groggily awoke, yawned, took a quick dip, and then happily treated himself to leftover green turtle for breakfast. As the reptile ate, a mated pair of Lycaesaurus, mammal-like reptiles about the size of coyotes and colorfully blotched with black and yellow, came to drink in the gray light at a bank far away.
They could still see and smell the Turturcassis feeding nonetheless, and eyed the scene with envy before moving on. How come he got to have such luscious meals of turtle from the placid river? But that just effortlessly came with the territory when you were built and born to be a turtle killer.
As Tallacus and some off-line friends have suggested, I'll be using this space from now on both to point out what page number of The World of Kong each creature in a chapter can be found lurking on, and which beasts are entirely my own creations. Hopefully this will go a long way towards helping readers sort through the confusion.
In order of appearance the cast of charactersare: Carrion Parrots, pg. 73; Turturcassis, pg. 108; Spinaculex, pg. 101; Firesides, pg. 112; Rapanatrix, pg. 113; Bloodfish, pg. 112; Segnix, pg. 113; Skull Island snapper, pg. 108; Ghoulfish, pg. 113; Killer-eels, pg. 115; Carrion centipede, pg. 70; Malamagnus, pg. 102; Dirt turtle, pg. 104; Papilio, pg. 111; Piranhadon, pg. 88; Morsel fish, pg. 112; Skull Island egret, pg. 118; Skull Island hawk, pg. 180; Zeropteryx, pg. 75; Udusaurus, pg. 106; Seplucro, pg. 111; Swamp-Wing, pg. 116; Lycaesaurus, pg. 69.
As for the creatures I've invented myself, they are: Black's giant mosquito, Naomi's nutcracker, Driscoll's shingled catfish, Jack's red crayfish, Serkis' frog, and the Sapphire imp mosquito. An inside joke is in every creature's name too of course. I also decided to have the sea turtles living in Skull Island's main river, which are loggerhead turtles in the book, be green sea turtles and live in all the large rivers. Why the change? Because it made more ecological sense to me and I just felt like it. So there. Last but not least, PLEASE review! It makes the expedition leader happy. :)