Happy Leap Year Day! I promise the next chapter will be longer, I just needed to get this out before it ate my brain.
Please forgive my meagre understanding of how to clean up fish for eating. I usually get my fish from the market already prepared (or have a relative clean it for me), so all of the know-how presented here came from the Internet, cobbled together with what little bits and pieces I can remember from watching relatives clean up their own catch from fishing trips years ago.
NOTE #1: The fish shown here are, in real life, found in Costa Rican lakes, along with alligator gar (which, as they apparently can grow upwards of 7 feet long apiece, our clever girls probably might take to like hunting for fun and snacks, if Owen can get them to enjoy fish instead of the chubby pigs that were sent in as part of pack dynamic training).
NOTE #2: As I am not a certified paleontologist and honestly have no idea if raptors can actually swim (they don't exactly look built for water...), I'm going to assume they can handle shallow water to some extent, and that their long, gorgeous tails might work similarly to help direct and propel them through water if they do, in fact, swim. Given that the velociraptors of the Jurassic Park universe are actually Deinonychus in all but name, and that remains of said dinosaur have been found in deltas, lagoons, and tropical/sub-tropical forest areas, the idea of Owen's girls being at least somewhat physically equipped for a swampy or floodplain-like habitat with lots of water just makes sense to me.
NOTE #3: Though the mighty internet tells me it is possible, I don't recommend resharpening blades of any sort with the bottoms of ceramic mugs. With no personal experience for backup, I have no idea if it actually can work, but for Owen's sake, I'm going to blindly assume that it does, because I'm 99.999% certain that there are no professional-grade whetstones or professional knife sharpeners in business at the island for him to go to. Also, the Internet told me (so don't take it too seriously) that, among their already commendable senses, raptors apparently have excellent olfactory senses. I imagine this makes veterinary checkups at the park rather difficult, since antiseptics and other hospital smells tend to be rather strong for humans, so for a raptor, it's probably much worse. Blue would probably hate it.
WARNING: If cleaning fish grosses anyone out, I advise you to be prepared for nastiness, please!
There were chunks of fish still clinging to Owen's fingers as he hauled the newest catch out of the muddy lake water. Now, more than ever, he was grateful for the fact that, despite the overall damage done to the Park as a whole, his tiny Sunrio bungalow was far enough away to have made it out unscathed by the carnage, fishing equipment included.
Removing hooks and attached homemade lures from the newly-caught prey was comforting in both the familiarity and sense of stability it provided. The doomed collection of rainbow trout gasped, heaving for air that wouldn't come, scales glistening in the sun in a metallic sheen of multiple colours as he pulled out his knife. Tan fingers held down the first of the squirming bodies firmly, the sharpened edge glittering like a slice of silver as he selected his first quarry.
The setup on the picnic table out front looked almost comically like a horror film gone hilariously wrong. The plastic bag he'd put into the laundry basket was filled to the brim with frigid, ice chunk-filled water (he'd taken it from the nearest restaurant's kitchen refridgerator, but what did it matter? It would all melt anyway, the electricity was out and no one else was there to use it) to help keep the fish from spoiling in the humid island air. To the side was a plastic bait bucket to throw any unwanted parts in as he cleaned the pair he'd selected to eat for himself. The much larger remaining portion of caught fish (hopefully they'll take to fish as well as they did pigs) flopped around in the basket's crowded interior, fins splashing the gradually sun-warmed water everywhere as he cut scales off in short, quick movements, moving upwards from the tail to the gills with welcomed muscle memory.
The pectoral and dorsal fins quivered weakly under his hands for a while, then finally went limp in death as he silently scraped away glistening, almost filmy scales with the sharp edge of his knife, the blade freshly-cleaned with leftover dish soap and and a firm scrubbing in water boiled on the camp stove. The skin underneath was slowly peeled away with a pair of pliers from his toolbox, sterilized in the same manner as the knife, and then the trout was rinsed clean of any remaining scales or other residue with a bit of water from the plastic bottle he'd allotted for himself for the day. Grimacing slightly as the water dripped off the corpse to collect on the ground (need to save your water, Grady, there's no damn water treatment facility running when the whole park's been evacuated and the power's knocked out), he twisted the cap back onto the bottle and turned back to his work.
Bit by bit, the bucket filled with leftovers: strips of slick, slimy skin, tiny bits of shimmering, translucent scales, pinches of flesh clinging to the edges of thin, ghost-like bones, slippery chunks of guts that gleamed wetly in the morning sun. A thin, syrupy mess of blood congealed like runny lingonberry jam at the bottom of the plastic container as he decapitated each of his fish and let the blood drain out. Owen wondered if he should keep the remnants to turn into homemade chum, and see if it could attract more prey. At the very least, adding bits of leftover fish to his lures might help garner the attention of an alligator gar or two, and he knew that if he managed to get any sort of positive reception to the addition of fish to a raptor diet, bigger catches than a basket of rainbow trout would be needed.
Maybe if the rest of the park's still clear, I can check the Mosasaur exhibit for any leftover frozen sharks. It's nothing like hunting live prey, but at least there would be something to snack on, so long as they haven't started thawing out and rotting now that there's no electricity to power the freezers. Protein, Vitamin A, plenty of Iron...
A thought struck him as he finished, and the unnerving edge of it was sharp enough that it almost disguised the sharpness of the knife as he cut off a set of fins close enough to his fingers for the edge to graze his thumb. A muffled hiss accompanied the realization, and he rearranged his hands accordingly. Well, he conceded grimly, Wu better have worked out how to avoid mercury poisoning in dinosaurs when he went tinkering in his labs, because if he didn't...
The thought didn't bear thinking about. Thoughts of vanished appetites, lusterless scaly hides, and dulling raptor gazes filled his mind for a sickening moment, and he shoved the thoughts away with a harsh slam of the knife's point into the wooden picnic table's surface.
Dammit.
Sighing inwardly, he yanked the blade out of the wood, less concerned with the deep gouge in the wood than he was with whether or not the edge had been damaged. He didn't have a usable whetstone at the bungalow to resharpen the blade with, and trying to find something else to use as a substitute would be next to impossible.
Considering his options as he stared at the edge, he sighed as he spotted a long, though thankfully shallow, nick at the end. Well, there goes my coffee mug, then.
Still, if the alternative was the blade being damaged (and therefore less useful), he could make the necessary sacrifice. It's not as if I need coffee to stay awake nowadays, anyway. The threat of possible impending disembowelment by dinosaur claws is still at FUBAR-levels out here, especially since no one back inside can go hunting properly yet when they're injured and drugged up to the gills with painkillers.
Decision made, he took a moment to mourn the loss of his favorite mug, and then another to put the fish-filled laundry basket and the offal-filled scraps bucket under the picnic table to help keep the ice from melting in the heat, before heading back into the bungalow, one eye keeping a lookout to see if anyone else was awake yet. Years of experience had taught him that, if woken early, Blue would snap her teeth dangerously close to his hands, Delta would snarl and flex her toe claws, Echo would curl into a ball and lash her tail out if approached, and Charlie would emit a high-pitched piping cry that tended to waver between heart-wrenchingly sad, and ear-splittingly loud. There were still several smaller scars on his hands from when they were younger and he'd begun establishing daytime schedules, starting with morning wakeup drills (Blue always did like to use his fingers for teething rings, and when she was grumpy after waking up she'd nip him for rousing her from the incubators for feeding time. Once her teeth grew in it was less funny to see her formerly gum-filled jaws test out their new teeth when he'd just promised the hospital staff he wouldn't show up for at least two more days, but all babies liked chewing things, right?).
The scent of antiseptic hadn't fully left yet, and Owen's nose wrinkled in silent distaste as the acrid tang burned his nostrils when he opened one of the kitchen cupboards. Ugh, hospital stench gets into everything. Hopefully it hasn't sunk into the bedding or anything, Blue'll blow a gasket if the mattress smells too strong.
Pulling out his favorite coffee mug, Owen grasped it by the handle and silently shut the cupboard door, closing it slowly to help muffle the potential noise, eyes darting back and forth to keep the bungalow's other occupants in view.
Blue let out a soft whuffling sound, Echo snapping her jaws in a manner vaguely similar to a sleeping human smacking their lips; Owen slowly froze, gaze zeroing in on the four forms sprawled out on the other side of the bungalow.
Stay asleep, stay sleep, stay asleep...
Delta snorted, turning her head to the side. Charlie curled closer, tail wriggling slightly.
Stay asleep, stay asleep...
The air, for a moment, seemed impossibly frozen. At the back of his mind, Owen took note of the number of steps between the door and his current stance by the cupboard, the different breathing pitches of the four additional bodies before him, and the approximate amount of time it would take him to cross that distance as quietly as possible when accounting for the heaviness of his boots.
Blue snuffled a little, then turned over on the mattress; Owen stared back silently as a single golden eye looked at him blankly.
A moment, then two, passed, and then the oldest of the raptors blinked languidly, eye still staring at nothing, before closing again, and Owen fought the urge to release a sigh. Still sleeping the painkillers off, then. She always did blink a lot when she was tired from checkups.
After several long moments of waiting to ensure that there was no danger of anyone getting up in a foul mood due to simply standing there and breathing, he took another long look at the remainder of the pack before carefully slipping out the door, shutting it silently. The painkillers he'd given them were noticeably wearing off, given their restless movements, and when they finally stopped working entirely, Owen didn't want to return to the bungalow without a resharpened blade at hand or a brace of alligator gar per raptor to placate.
Settling down at the picnic table, he held the mug upside down and drew the blade against the grain at an angle, going through the repetitive motions with relieved muscle memory. Draw five, turn over, draw five, turn over, draw four, turn over, draw four, turn over...
By the time he'd reduced it down to a single draw, the blade was notably sharper, and he took a moment to offer silent thanks to Barry for teaching him the trick. Granted, it's not the best job, he noted, studying the edge critically, but it'll do in a pinch.
The job done, he knelt down under the picnic table and examined the laundry basket. Not as cold, but there's still some ice in there. The fish are slower, they must've used up a lot of oxygen panicking. Need to change the water soon.
A cursory sniff of the water made his stomach roll for a split second, and he sighed as he peered closer and realised that several of the fish, in their panicked state, had fouled the water. Not fresh enough, then.
He could understand why. Dinosaur or not, no one wanted to eat contaminated food if they could help it.
An idea skittered into view at the forefront of his mind, and he seized it, turning toward his next course of action. Pulling out his strongest fishing rod, the bucket of scraps, one of the fish from the laundry basket, and a suitable hook, he turned toward the shore of the lake, grasping the bowie knife handle and tapping it idly against his hip as ideas percolated.
Hope the girls will learn to like alligator gar. I've got plenty of bait.