The Day The Dinosaurs Came To St. Andrew

Chapter 1—This is Me Have you ever seen a tree that looked like it had been attacked by birds, elephants and alligators at the same time? One morning on my way to school, one of the larger trees sitting along a grassy median in the school parking lot caught my attention. One of its longer limbs had been curiously snapped in the opposite direction. It looked as though something very large had brushed against it the day before. It was just hanging there, a large, brown limb that was almost as thick as my forearm. I thought for a moment that maybe a car had driven over the grassy median and had broken the tree limb. But the limb was too high for any car to have damaged it. Only a very large eighteen wheel truck or a school bus would have been tall enough to reach the limb. Perhaps one of the mirrors from these giant vehicles had hit the branch and snapped it with one swipe. I wondered what else could have broken the limb. I thought that maybe several very big eighth graders had pulled on the limb the day before at school. I tried to imagine the scene of nine or ten eighth graders bouncing up and down on the big limb, but it was too hard to create that picture in my mind. I knew that students at my school did not do that type of thing, and it just didn’t seem possible. To add to that, it had rained the day before, and there were no human footprints, truck or bus tracks next to the tree. I looked at the tree again more carefully. Several of the leaves near its top were missing, like they had been plucked off by the hand of a giant. The entire top of the tree was bald like my uncle Ronny. But this was a young tree, and most of the green leaves on the side of the tree were still there. A few of them had been broken in half and had a rough edge. It looked as though a caterpillar had gnawed them right down the middle. One of these leaves had fallen to the ground. In fact, it was only half of a leaf. I picked it up to look at it more closely. It looked like it had been cut in half by zigzag scissors. I glanced at the broken tree limb again. My eyes traced the limb to the trunk of the tree and then to the ground. I stared at the grassy median that was several feet wide and about fifteen feet long. On its far end, there was a brown muddy patch. At first, I thought that it was a hole made by the tire of a truck or bus. I wondered how I could have missed it previously when I looked at the ground for tire marks. To be sure, I walked up to the muddy area to get a closer look. Up close, it looked much different. In fact, it wasn’t a muddy patch at all. It was actually a hole that went about one foot into the grass. The muddy hole was about fourteen inches across and went straight down into the ground. It looked as though someone had taken a giant, round cookie cutter and pressed it right into the grass. The hole was so perfectly formed that you could have put a small skinny bucket into it, and it would have fit perfectly. I crouched down to inspect the dirt further. I looked at the hole carefully, but there were no signs of shovel marks. At that moment, I was absolutely sure that no eighth grader, truck or bus could have made the hole. I wondered if the hole was in some strange way related to the missing leaves on the tree. I took a deep breath, inhaling through my nose and taking in all of the scents around me. The air near the grass had a very unique smell. I breathed in again to try to determine exactly what type of scent was coming from the ground. I knew that I recognized its odor. It was as familiar as the smell of pizza drifting from the inside of a pizzeria in the summertime. But it had been greatly covered over by the rain, like the strong scent given off by the mint frosting on a lightly sweetened chocolate cake. Similar to the mint frosting, it was a scent that was strong enough to mask all that was under it. I took one last breath, but I was still unsure of the type of odor that was coming from the ground. Then I looked up and realized that it was time for me to go to school, and so I walked toward the front door.