It was a bright sunny afternoon in Dinosaur Park, and all the children were playing happily. But not Leo. He didn’t like seeing children run about and laugh while he had to sit still and keep quiet.
He was a little boy, with big tortoiseshell spectacles on his nose and a strap round his forehead to keep them in place, and a green mouth organ hanging to his waist by a black ribbon. He looked as if he had just come out of an oratorio.
Leo took off his spectacles and looked through them at the trees. They looked very much like trees, but he thought they ought to be some other thing. Leo knew a great many names for things, and he told himself they ought to be “plait-crowned” trees with scaly trunks, like those in Africa, or else the lovely houseleek trees the Greeks had. Or else they ought to be—
Suddenly, at the foot of one of the pursy little hillocks there stood a great dinosaur. It heard Leo immediately, for it had large ears. They looked like fans. But it did not push them down flat after hearing the noise, like the Nigerians; on the contrary, it stuck them out still farther and pricked them up. Its neck was flattened sideways and the head had four horns, two upright and two sloping. The eyes, too, were very curious; they were set one above the other, like a toad’s; and when the eyes of the dinosaur looked toward Leo, the two long tongues came out of its snout and began tasting the air. Then Leo became frightened, and he put on his spectacles again and lived in hopes the dinosaur had not seen him.
When he looked through his spectacles again he saw that the dinosaur was lying down, with its four legs all stretched out. But at the same moment it gave a loud roar, and in trying to lift itself still higher up it pushed the pyramid of earth on which it lay nearly three feet away. Then it spread its wings and began licking up the dirt right and left till there was not a crumb left. At last it became quite tame and said: “Come here, little boy, do.”
Leo knew he ought not to go; but there was something so nice about the invitation, and the dinosaur looked so interesting.
“Come, I won’t do you any harm, I assure you. I can’t take you on my back, for I don’t believe it would hold one leg of mine; but come here and let us have a chat.”
“I would come,” thought Leo, “if only I could see the meantime whether he might not be dangerous for all that.” With that he took an apple out of his pocket and threw it toward the dinosaur. When it was about halfway to its mouth, the ears and tongues pushed outward, and it picked the apple up right and left in an unaffectedly polite way. Then it quickly swallowed it whole.
“It tasted to me as if it were quite fresh,” it then said. “But new ones are seldom bad, we must admit.”
Then Leo went up to it. It was a little bit to be feared; its looks were decidedly alarming even at a distance, and now they were almost so, too, at close quarters. Its head was as big as a barrel, and the two ears were like two fans.
“The head is not the biggest part of me,” said the dinosaur. “You should without fail see my trunk.”
“I would very much like to be able to see it,” replied Leo.
“Very well, then, I will first lay my legs down flat beside my body like a water rat, and then we will measure. But only imagine, little boy, that I have wings. I say so now, for it struck me on the way here, how absolutely without parallel my whole trunk is. Only fancy; they think a pterodactyl is the biggest thing that ever cut a caper through the air, and then there is me. But I have wings.”
“That, of course, is very interesting,” said Leo, “but the floor is far from level where you are lying.”
“Very true,” answered the dinosaur. “Thank you for mentioning it. It must be made scaly.”
The dinosaur got up, and while it did so it fidgeted with all its own wings and claws, and again opened its ears and licked up the loose earthen mountain on its left, so that the floor might be more level.
“If you lie here,” said Leo, “I should like it to slope gently off toward you.”
“You don’t fancy it slanted too much toward you?”
“Not too much.”
“Well, then, open your mouth,” said the dinosaur, which then at once set to work and laid one of its wings and one of its hind claws along Leo’s throat, and both its front legs across his mouth. The eagle with the eagle’s tongue is great fun; but then only try the dinosaur!