Chapter 63: Screw you!

"Damn! It's really huge!" Jamie shouted with satisfaction while she looked the enormous beast below them. Mitch was taking pictures in profusion. He was over the moon even more than his student. They had found it! They had found the spinosaurus! The giant animal seemed to have just finished consuming a rather large prey. Normally a dinosaur would have rested after such a meal, but as they approached it abandoned the shore and swam away into the water. Mitch was surprised to see how much stamina he had even on a full stomach. "It's running away!" the pilot yelled. "It's the helicopter's fault! The noise scares it" Mitch explained. Even for humans, who couldn't claim to have the best hearing, the noise caused by the helicopter blades was unbearable; but to a predator's sensitive ears the sound was incredibly painful. For the spinosaurus it was like having a giant gong next to its ears, it was natural for it to try to get away. "We have to drug it or we risk losing it!" "The dart with the narcotic is ready! Leave it to me!" Jamie exclaimed, inserting the syringe full of acetorphine inside the rifle. The amount was enough to knock out a tyrannosaurus, but to be on the safe side she had increased the dose slightly: the animal looked much bigger than a t-rex, they couldn't take risks. If the narcotic hadn't been strong enough, the spinosaurus could have woken up at the wrong time, and it could have ended very, very badly for them. After all, nothing was more dangerous than a frightened animal, and surely if the spinosaurus had awakened surrounded by unknown primates carrying strange metal sticks it would have been very frightened; Jamie preferred not to imagine how it would react in that case. She took aim and, when she was sure she could hit it, she fired. In a fraction of a second, the narcotic dart emerged from the barrel of the gun and traveled toward the spinosaurus at more than three hundred meters every second, a velocity almost equal to the speed of sound. "Did you hit it?" Mitch asked her. Jamie bit her lip. "I don't know" Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing immediately if the animal had been hit or not: they were too high to see clearly where the dart had landed. If their target had been an elephant or a rhinoceros, immediately after being hit it would have already shown signs of fatigue; but with reptiles, narcotics worked slowly. And since dinosaurs were reptiles, it was hard to know if they had been hit by narcotic from the first moment. "Shall I shoot another?" Jamie asked after a couple of minutes, seeing that the spinosaurus didn't look tired at all. "No!" Mitch shouted. They didn't know how narcotic the spinosaurus could handle. If the doses had been wrong they could have sent it into a coma! Risking to kill that animal would have been a crime for the science. They had to wait and see. If the spinosaurus had been hit, sooner or later it would have shown signs of fatigue. The problem was that it had changed direction and it was heading for the opposite bank, where there were many trees that could offer it cover. "If it goes to the forest we will lose it!" Jamie exclaimed, loading another dart. They couldn't wait any longer, if the spinosaurus was hiding in the forest it would have been impossible to find it with the helicopter. She was ready to shoot a second time when Mitch stopped her: "Wait! Look!" Below them the spinosaurus was trying to get out of the river, but its movements were strange; it swayed constantly, as if it was hard for it to stand up. It kept its head down and it seemed to be nauseous. Before it could reach the shore it had lowered itself to the point that it had started walking on all fours just to be able to remain standing. When it was finally out of the water, it let itself go and collapsed on its stomach. After that, it didn't move anymore. "You got it!" Mitch exclaimed beaming, patting Jamie on the shoulder. She replied with a satisfied laugh. The helicopter lowered and landed on the shore. All three of them, including the pilot, went down to see the animal. They had nothing to fear: the noise of the helicopter would have surely made all the other animals in the vicinity, including carnivores, flee. "Damn... it's really a hot rod..." Jamie murmured as she stared at the giant creature. The huge sail seemed so high that it exceeded the sky. Mitch was also fascinated. Strangely, it seemed to him that the spinosaurus was slightly larger than the one seen in the video, but it was probably just an effect of the camera. After all, it was impossible for that animal to have grown so much in such a short time. He was quivering with the urge to study it, but before doing anything they had to make sure it was sedated for good. While Jamie held it at gunpoint, Mitch walked over and patted it on the muzzle, in the area he knew was most sensitive for many spinosaurids. The spinosaurus didn't react. "It's completely asleep" he confirmed. "Ah ah! Good!" Jamie said, lowering the rifle with the narcotic. She was pleased with herself: catching a moving target at that distance wasn't easy even if it was so big, and she had taken it on the first shot! Mitch opened his suitcase and took out the measuring tape. With the help of the pilot, he stretched it along the whole body of the spinosaurus. The result left him stunned. That animal was 23 meters long! The largest known tyrannosaurus had reached 15 meters in length, but it was born and lived in captivity; most of the specimens in nature didn't exceed 12-13 meters. Which meant that spinosaurus was almost twice as long as an ordinary tyrannosaurus! The claws were even more surprising: by measuring them, Mitch discovered that the forelimbs were up to three and a half meters long and that the claws exceeded sixty centimeters! And not only that: by carefully observing the animal's fingers, Mitch realized that they possessed enormous muscles. The ones of the arms were even more developed: measuring the length of the biceps and triceps, Mitch concluded that they had to produce enough force to crack a stone as if it were butter, or perhaps even more if the shoulder muscles were also so developed. From this, he deduced that the claws must be the main weapon of the spinosaurus. He wanted to measure the sail, but climbing onto the back of a living animal, even if it was sedated, was a challenge he didn't want to accomplish. After all, they didn't know how long the narcotic would actually last. He didn't want to risk being on the animal's back when it woke up. He loved challenges, but he was certainly not suicidal. However, until now the spinosaurus seemed to be sleeping hard. "Jamie, please help me! Put that thing down and come and give me a hand!" he said as he took a syringe to take a blood sample of the creature. Jamie nodded and handed the narcotic rifle to the pilot, going to help the professor. Unfortunately, however, the skin turned out to be too thick and the needle couldn't penetrate it. The syringe broke in the hands of the two scientists and only luck prevented them from getting cuts by the pieces of glass. "Shit" Mitch swore looking at the pieces of the syringe in his hands. "You have to go higher, where the veins in the neck are!" Jamie said, based on what she knew about the morphology of spinosaurs. "I'm the lightest among us. You and the pilot can carry me up, so I can reach the right spot!" Mitch thought about it for a moment. It was a good idea, but it was just what he had hoped to avoid. "It may be dangerous" "I'll take the risk. Look at it, it's sleeping like a stone right now: it won't wake up" Jamie replied, although in her mind she added: "I hope". Mitch considered it, then agreed that the woman was right. Even though he didn't like that situation, he nodded to her. "Okay. Hey, boy, come here" he yelled at the pilot. "Help me carry her up" The pilot left the rifle with the narcotic on the ground and went to help him. The two grabbed Jamie by the legs and prepared to pull her up. But suddenly there was a movement that made them fall. As they stood up they heard a loud 'crack'. When Mitch put his glasses back on, he saw one of the giant forelimbs of the animal crush the rifle with the narcotic. Just then the spinosaurus' eyelids opened and its enormous eye rested on them. A slight growl emerged from its throat, but more than irritated it seemed satisfied. Mitch understood: the spinosaurus had screwed them! "Clever boy..." A roar rang out across the bend in the river.