Welcome back!
Note: this chapter takes place the day after the previous one.
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After his brief and rather surprising meeting with Terence, the rest of the night had been uneventful: he'd had dinner with the rest of the staff, then quickly showered and gone to bed. Part of him wanted to get ready for the next day, when the rest of his training would begin.
Additionally, part of him wanted to try and force away the memories that his visit had brought back to the surface. But that was for later.
Owing to the fact that he'd gone to sleep early, Tristan was up early the next day. Refreshed and relaxed from a good night's sleep, he was quick to clean himself, get dressed and have breakfast. The last action, though, briefly dampened his mood: he was normally used to seeing his siblings when he woke up, but now, he was alone. While he'd told Nigel about everyone he knew that could help at the park and probably would do so, given the time of year, he wasn't sure if they would want to come, and even then, it would still take some time for them to finalize all of their preparations for the park. So even if they did come, Tristan would be a relative pariah in terms of age for a little while longer.
But getting sad was not something he intended to do: he was in a park that was home to dinosaurs, and moping about being lonely was definitely not on his to-do list for such a place. So, when he finished his breakfast and cleaned his dishes, he quickly set off to meet up at the area designated for new recruits. There, they would learn the rest of the skills they needed to run the park. Yesterday may have been their first trial, but many more would pass before they could truly be considered members of the park's staff.
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Once everyone had arrived, they were quickly divided into groups based on what they specialized in: regular keepers were given an exhibit to head to, where they could watch the more experienced workers care for the park's residents and pick up on their skills. Trainee vets would return to Suzanne's clinic, where they would learn more about the physiology of the creature they were working with and how to help them if they became injured. Maintenance staff were already being given blueprints to study so that they could properly maintain all of the park's infrastructure. If this were a zoo, there would also have been staff getting ready to set up shops and what-not, but this was obviously unnecessary, given the park's secrecy. Overall, all of the new staff had a place to go.
All except one.
Owing to the fact that Tristan was part of the rescue team, he didn't really have any specific place to go to: the team normally trained on their own, and all of the members selected so far (Tristan included) already had plenty of experience dealing with all kinds of hostile environments, so they normally just kept to themselves, or worked with others. While this meant many things, the big one was that, when they weren't on missions, they could work with any group they wanted to, as long as they had the training.
With this in mind, Tristan decided to spend the day with the keepers and get to learn more about the park's animals, seeing how it would be rather boring to be at a park filled with dinosaurs and not be able to do more than look at them.
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The first exhibit the team went to was, interestingly enough, the Velociraptor exhibit. Nigel had rescued a pair by accident during his mission to find the giant claw (which had been released to the public in the Chased by Dinosaurs series), so it wasn't very surprising that the pair had been moved to the park when it had started accepting animals.
Surprisingly, it had been rather easy to tend to them: the raptors were nocturnal, meaning that most of the duties that needed to be done to maintain their exhibit could be done while they were asleep. As for feeding, well, that could easily be done at night.
Despite this, they had been one funny scene during the orientation: one of the new keepers, a man named Paul, had been cleaning away the bones of one of the raptors previous meals when the male had woken up from his roost in the hill above him. The raptor, unknowing of the man's presence, had promptly decided to relieve itself, right on top of Paul. Needless to say, much laughter had occurred at his expense.
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The second exhibit they tended to was that of the park's Incisivosaurus, one of the strangest of the oviraptorid line: unlike their descendents, these egg-thieves had teeth. Rather large, buck-toothed ones, too.
These dinosaurs were rather aggressive at times, but overall they were rather amicable once they got to know you. The staff were informed that it was possible to feed them by hand without losing your hand, and that this was in-fact encouraged, as it helped make the oviraptorids more tame around people.
Here, too, there were some funny incidents: people frequently hand fed them fruit, which meant that, when they got to eager for a meal, the staff often found themselves splattered with fruit juice. Tristan himself witnessed one women named Melissa get her face covered in orange juice due to the male biting down hard into the orange she had offered him. Everyone had laughed at this, even Melissa.
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The rest of the exhibits would end up being a blur in Tristan's mind: he didn't really see much eventful happen in them, so they were only a focus for a few fleeting moments. He remembered assisting the vets and other keepers in vigorously removing a large number of ticks that had infested one of the sauropods, watching the Giganotosaurus tear apart some meat he had been given, and seeing the mosasaur allowing remoras to hitch a ride on its belly. Overall, though, the rest of the day had been rather boring.
Then came the recruits final charge: the undisputed king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex.
Needless to say, Tristan was very happy to get work with the rexes.
Most of the work they needed to was just feeding the giant tyrannosaurs, whose monstrous appetites needed multiple feedings daily just to keep them full. This was usually in the form of beef or pork, with the occasional goat or lamb carcass added in for variety. All of these meats would be hooked up to a crane, which would then be used to hoist the flesh over the fence, ensuring that the tyrannosaurs did not harm anyone while they fed.
This mostly made for a rather boring teaching session, but Tristan really couldn't complain: rexes were dangerous.
However, as the group was rapping up, Tristan noticed something: once again, Terence had appeared. This was unsurprising: he had shown up during to feed, as had all of his family, so his appearance wasn't something that had gone unnoticed. What had gone unnoticed, though, was that he seemed to be moving around listlessly. He wasn't hungry, for he'd wolfed down a whole sheep, and he'd recently been checked for disease, so sickness was not a problem. He wasn't tired either. So why did he seem unhappy?
Just then, an owl that had taken up residence within the tyrannosaurs' exhibit hooted, instantly earning Terence's attention. He eagerly followed the hooting until it stopped, became confused, looked around for some time, then returned to his listlessness.
At this moment, a thought finally struck Tristan: maybe Terence was board? Most animals needed some kind of enrichment in their exhibit to fight off boredom, because many animals did all kinds of things for fun. If this was true of Terence, then the tyrannosaur needed something to play with.
As the rest of the crew was getting ready for dinner, Tristan started looking around to see if anything was available that he could use to relieve Terence of his boredom. Eventually, his eyes fell on a large purple ball, often used by zoos to keep big cats and elephants entertained. Smiling, Tristan quickly grabbed the ball, fit it into the crane, got it over the fence, then maneuvered the crane so that the ball would roll out into the exhibit.
The minute it came into his field of view, Terence began moving toward the ball. The first thing he tried to do was bite it, but it was too wide for him to get his mouth around it. With that failing, he promptly nudged the ball, sending it rolling away. Surprised at this, Terence quickly ran after the ball and stopped it with his foot. After a moment, he hit it again, then quickly began chasing after it once more. This quickly became a pattern, which brought a smile to Tristan's face: it appeared that he'd found a way to relieve the tyrannosaur of his boredom. Satisfied, Tristan left to go enjoy dinner with the rest of the staff.
Unseen by either boy or tyrannosaur, Bob had watching the situation from the park's control room. He was rather impressed with Tristan's initiative, and was mentally kicking himself for not thinking of giving the tyrannosaurs something to play with earlier. Sighing, he informed the staff in charge of supplies about the ball in the tyrannosaur exhibit, so that no one would waste time looking for it, before he too decided to join the rest of the staff for dinner.
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AN: Read and Review. This is Flameal15k, signing off!