Alice carefully observed Eshe the American cheetah as she napped within the recovery pen she was living in until she fully recovered. As she observed the sleeping spotted cat, taking note of the healthy rhythmic breathing she was making in her sleep, Alice couldn't help but smile. For some reason, she'd started feeling that it was her responsibility to watch over Eshe - judging by how well her wound was healing without showing any signs of infection or complications, Alice had to admit that her hopes seemed to be coming true.

She nodded her head, happy that Eshe, after two days in her new surroundings, was still doing well. Alice proceeded to draw out a lightly frozen slab of beef for when she woke up. This was a feeding strategy that, based on other zoos, they'd used with the other prehistoric cats.

The sound of the frozen meat landing awakened Eshe, and she lifted her head, eyes widened as if alerted, before looking in the direction of the noise and saw the frozen meat lying nearby. She then seemed to notice Alice, looking her way with a confused look in her yellow eyes. Alice was a familiar presence, but she still needed to confirm that the frozen meat was in fact for her. Alice nodded, having expected this behaviour; she'd only recently arrived, after all. Alice drew out a wooden pole and pushed the frozen meat towards the American cheetah. After about a minute or so, Eshe got up from her napping position, crouched low to the ground, and started creeping towards the meat, readying to pounce, before lunging at the meat and slamming her paws down on it, only for it to slip right out and slide a few feet towards the right most wall of the pen. Eshe, eager not to lose her 'prey', went after it repeatedly until finally the meat had completely melted in the sunlight, allowing the big cat to at last feed. Alice nodded in contentment as she watched Eshe feed. Her thoughts were interrupted by her communicator going off.

Alice answered, Eshe lifting her head from the remains of the beef at the sudden noise from the communicator. "Denham speaking," said Alice.

"Cheng here," said the voice of Tina Cheng on the other end of the line. "I'm at the La Brea section. Ready to do the observations on the carnivores when you are."

"Sounds good," said Alice. She nodded her head. "I'll be with you momentarily."

She ended the call and looked back at Eshe's recovery pen, noticing that the American cheetah had walked right up to her, a curious look in her yellow eyes. Alice chuckled slightly at the sight of this. "I have to go now," she said, placing her hand against the railing. "I'll be back later, ok?"

Eshe stared at Alice for a few seconds, and then placed her head against Alice's hand. Alice couldn't help but briefly chuckle at the sound of the large cat seemingly purring. Eshe removed her head from Alice's hand, before turning around to finish what remained of her meal. Smiling, Alice turned and left the area to join up with Tina for the observations of the La Brea carnivores.

. . . . .

Alice met Tina at the La Brea section and the two began their observations. They started with the arctodus, taking note of how the bears briefly established their pecking order around the cow carcasses, before each taking their own portion to eat in peace – Smokey was always the one that ate first. As Smokey ate, they also took note of how the small fang marks that had been left on his shoulder over the course of his duel with Diego back in the past had almost disappeared. "Things are definitely good here," Tina stated, and Alice saw no reason to disagree.

Next they dropped by the American lion paddock, where they took note of how all of the females were patrolling the boundaries of the territory while Lafcadio himself was napping in front of the den of the exhibit in all his glory. In contrast, all seven of the homotherium were active, with the two males engaging in a mock tussle, two of the females working to 'stalk' a large rubber ball, and the other three females peacefully resting in the sun. Then they reached the Smilodon paddock, where Diego and Shira were roaming around their new territory – the scars Diego received from his duel with Smokey still on his body. "They've recovered nicely", Tina said. Alice nodded, "Leon was pretty particular on us checking up on Diego." There was a pause.

Alice turned to Tina, "What do you think of him? Leon, I mean." Tina shrugged, "Not much. He's been making do with some recording device, hasn't he?" Alice said, "Yeah, he used it on the mission a few days ago." Tina snorted, "No substitute for real experience, right?" Alice nodded – as much as she liked Leon as a person, she had to admit he didn't really have much in the way of talent. And while his work with the recording device did appear to be a start in the right direction, it was really only just that; a start.

The two looked at each other. Most of the Pleistocene carnivores had been rescued from the tar pits and had arrived malnourished and suffering from heatstroke. Part of the reason they were out here in the first place was to check on them on behalf of the vet team.

Suddenly, a pair of low canine snarls came from the dire wolf and Pleistocene coyote enclosures. Alice and Tina turned to see Nero having a stand-off with the alpha male of the Pleistocene coyote pack, Dag. At that very moment, Nero was facing the foliage concealing the boundary between his 'territory' and Dag's, snarling, with teeth bared and yellow eyes narrowed as he crouched in preparation to lunge. Dag, in contrast, was keeping his shiftier gaze in the larger wolf's direction, snarling in challenge, his yellow eyes narrowed, and his tan and orange fur flowing in the light breeze. Their respective packs stood in position several feet behind their respective leaders, tensed up and alert ready to attack in case their leaders fought.

Alice and Tina briefly gazed at each other. While the carnivore paddocks in this zone had been designed for rotation, complete with underground tunnels to use as a means of transport, the dire wolf and Pleistocene coyote paddocks had been designed to look like they were connected, with a single electric fence hidden by foliage separating the paddocks, allowing for the natural enmity between the two species to allow for more natural behaviours. But judging by how Nero and Dag were behaving, it was starting to look as if this idea might have worked too well.

"This is a problem," said Alice.

"Yup," said Tina. "We should probably bring this up to Mr. Taymor and see if anybody can figure out a way to prevent things from getting too crazy between these two."

After a tense moment, Nero and Dag snarled and snapped at each other before loping back over to their packs. It appeared that they'd come to a tense 'truce'. The two keepers mentally sighed in relief, glad that this hadn't ended in a fight.

The sound of low growling turned their attention to the smilodon paddock in time to notice Diego and Shira staring each other down at the edges of their respective territories. The two let out a low snarl, as if saying 'respect my boundaries', turned around, and padded off deeper into their respective 'zones'.

Tina nodded her head. "Nice to see they're respecting each other's boundaries." She looked to Alice. "I suppose now all that's left is Duma and the rest of the American cheetahs?"

Alice nodded her head. "Yup."

The two girls headed off to observe the American cheetahs, both of them well aware of how busy today would be.

. . . . .

Yawning, Alice closed the book she had been reading. Tomorrow, she would finish it – not only had the mission had been tiring, but the past two days had been as well. All she wanted to do was sleep. Whilst on every mission, whichever member of the team had accompanied Drew had the night off keeper duties, her division had faced a massive influx in animals over these last two missions – from only caring for prehistoric mammals about the size of a rat, to having a wide range of large prehistoric mammals literally overnight.

It had been tiring and it was nice to have a bit of time off from all this. Plus, she had her own animals to care for.

A chattering noise turned her attention to what resembled a giant version of a parrot cage, with a latched-closed door to an outdoor run, where a coati stared at her with pleading eyes. Sighing, Alice opened the indoor run, before the coati, whose name was Kiko, began sniffing and climbing all over her. A brief thought crossed Alice's mind – coatis existed in South America during the Plio-Pleistocene. Maybe Kiko recognized the scents in some submerged part of his genetic memory, wondering why things his kind hadn't smelt in millions of years coming back.

As the coati clambered around, happy to enjoy a bit of freedom, Alice couldn't help but smile. She'd had him for around five years – he'd been an abandoned pet in Arizona. Alice had happily agreed to take him and the two had been inseparable ever since. At roughly the same time, she'd acquired two tanukis named Aika and Aiko – abandoned exotic pets, again, and who were now tending to their litter. The tanukis had initially been cautious of the coati in their midst, but the three animals had managed to get along.

And those hadn't been the only animals she'd learned to master. She put down the trough full of meat and whistled - within a few seconds, her little collection (numbering roughly eight in total) emerged from their various sleeping areas to eat their dinner. Kiko, Aika and Aiko were the first upon the communal bowl, taking what they could, with Aika and Aiko taking some back for their litter and Kiko grasping some in his arboreally-adapted hands to eat at leisure. Huaca the ocelot, also an abandoned pet, stayed on the sidelines alongside a fennec fox named Fanak, waiting until Aiko and Aika were done eating before feeding himself. Despite his small size, Fanak, using his speed, was able to get enough for him to eat between the dog, raccoon, tanukis, coati and ocelot.

Alice smiled - she'd had a fondness for taking in abandoned animals, ever since she was a kid and the neighbor found out the fox he'd shot had had a kit. She'd begged her parents to let her raise the orphan and they'd conceded, reluctantly, - she'd named him Fergus and, with the help of Jack and the family Labrador, had raised him to an adult, at which point he was gifted to a zoo (he was too tame to be released). He'd died a few years ago.

Speaking of foxes, Fanak, after taking his share of the food, had just fallen asleep. The male fennec fox was one of her newest acquisitions - he was another abandoned pet. Fanak kept mostly to himself even after Alice had begun training him - he rarely liked being with the little pack unless food was involved. That wasn't surprising - he was the smallest animal there, after all.

The only animals that didn't eat at the communal bowl were Macginty the capybara, who ate from her own trough in her garden pen, and Pua the tamandua, who ate his anteater food in the run he shared with Kiko.

Now, though, her attention fell onto her first two acquisitions, Black Mask and Bali - a raccoon and a Balinese street dog respectively. Named for their most notable physical features and country of origin respectively, the two had been acquired at around about the same time and had formed a deep bond, one that they shared with Kiko and the tanukis. However, Black Mask and Bali had the closest bond of all - they ate, moved and even slept together, with the raccoon sitting on the dog's back. As of now, they were both fast asleep, with Black Mask, as usual, sleeping upon the back of the slumbering Bali. Whilst they did eat from the communal bowl, they'd already eaten much earlier this evening and were hungry enough to join in at the moment.

Contemplating her little pack, Alice smiled and began thinking. As busy as life for her and the other mammal keepers had become ever since their duties had expanded from Mesozoic rat-sized mammals to the larger mammals of the Cenozoic era, she had to admit it was fun at times to work with such creatures. And furthermore, she was aware that there would probably be plenty more where that came from.

In fact, as soon as she'd found out about the very first mission involving Cenozoic mammals after the nothosaurus rescue, Alice had compiled a wishlist; from the most obvious like the woolly mammoths to the more bizarre, like the indricotheres, entelodonts and mesonychids… however, all that lay in the far future.

For now, it was best to roll with the punches whilst waiting for whatever would come next, regardless of how much busier her life became. In fact, now that she thought about it, she really couldn't help but wonder what was planned as the main target for next week's mission. After all, if the look Drew had on his face after a status meeting with Theodore was any indication, the next mission's target would be something big.

Right now, though, Black Mask had woken up and was trying to offer a morsel from the communal bowl to the most recent of Alice's acquisitions… who was also her strangest.

The newest member of her pack looked rather like a striped hyena pup. However, he was no hyena – rather, he was a Theriodictis, a strange kind of canid from Pliocene South America. Drew had found him, orphaned, on the most recent mission and sent him back to the park – when they'd returned, Yolanda had told her about the pup and Alice had immediately offered to hand-rear him. Whilst the pack they'd already brought back had mouths of their own to feed, she was hoping he could be integrated into the group once he was old enough.

However, given that the pup was still snapping at anything that came near him, this would likely be a slow process.

...Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So, this is Alice's POV chapter – she's sort of the mammal expert of the mission team (gravitating towards carnivores). All of her APs will be mammals, with a significant majority being carnivores and when there's a prehistoric mammal carnivore prominently appearing, she'll probably go on the mission.

BTW, the Theriodictis pup was a last-minute addition – I know she has Eshe, but I also wanted a smaller animal for her to raise. However, since this idea came late, just as I was putting the finishing touches to this chapter, I have no idea for a name for him (and it is a him) – any ideas?