The Rubber Diplodocus

Stories for Another Day

Long, long ago when dinosaurs were as common and ordinary as trees and worms, a baby dinosaur popped out of his egg who was different from all the other dinosaurs. This dinosaur had no bones. Instead his inside parts were made of rubber. Everything worked perfectly well, and to look at he was just like the other dinosaurs, except that when he walked, he bounced a bit instead of stomping.

His parents called him BeeBee. His big brother, Rolf, looked down on him with his long, elegant, diplodocus neck, and tried to pretend that he was someone else’s brother. “We don’t look anything alike,” he declared. “Everyone says I look exactly like my great-great-grandfather, Supersaurus. Personally, I think another species of dinosaur put their egg in our nest.” He turned away and went on cleaning his teeth. It would never do to leave behind a tooth that had decay in it for the archaeologists to find.

All the dinosaurs spent hours talking about where they were planning to die, so that their bones would be in perfect condition when the scientists dug them up in a thousand years. A nice sandy river, or a muddy swamp was the best. Every dinosaur’s dream was to be famous, and if they were very lucky, to have their bones put in a museum. Rolf’s dream was to have his whole skeleton found, and have it strung together with wires and hung in pride of place in the Dinosaur Hall in a famous museum. He spent a lot of time lying down in the swamp, practising artistic poses.

BeeBee had no bones at all to leave for collectors to find. No team of archaeologists with their spades and their soft brushes would ever find one of his bones and then dig up his skeleton and become famous overnight and have their names put in books.

None of the other diplodocuses had anything to say to BeeBee. He felt more and more lonely every day, until finally one day he decided he might as well leave, and see what there was to see in the rest of the world.

Because he wasn’t weighed down by big, heavy bones, BeeBee could travel faster than most dinosaurs. He travelled all over the world, from the forests at the very top to the wild jungles at the very bottom. Having no bones helped him to float too, so he could swim in great oceans and deep rivers. It was while he was swimming at a beautiful beach one day that something happened that changed everything for him.

BeeBee was floating on his back in the clear, warm water when he heard a commotion on the beach. A mother turtle was crying and wringing her flippers. “My babies!” she cried. “All the eggs that I laid up in the sandhills are hatching out!”

“That’s nice,” said BeeBee.

“But there’s a great, big pteranodon swooping down and eating them, one by one! Please, please, help me!” she pleaded.

BeeBee got up at once to see what he could do. “Hey, stop that!” he yelled. “Shoo! Go away!” But the pteranodon smiled its evil, crooked smile at him and kept on snapping up the baby turtles.

BeeBee thought hard. The baby turtles had to waddle all the way from the sand hills to the water, where they could swim away and be safe. What they needed was a safe passageway where the pteranodon couldn’t get them.

BeeBee clambered to the top of the sand hills, then he slid all the way down, dragging his long tail behind him to make a deep, narrow track that reached all the way to the water. It was just wide enough for a baby turtle to walk down, but too deep for a pteranodon to get his claws into. One by one, the baby turtles found their way into the track and toddled safely down to the sea.

The mother turtle was so happy that she told everyone what BeeBee had done. Soon lots of creatures were coming to BeeBee for help. He dug holes when the ground was too hard for the lizards and snakes to lay their eggs. He reached up his long neck to pick fruit and leaves for the smaller animals. Sometimes he helped when the young ones were playing soccer, using his tail to keep the ball out of the goal. He gave the baby lizards rides on his back, and let the little crocodiles jump on his big, bouncy tummy. Every time he helped someone, he made a new friend.

One day he came to a wide, flat plain, covered in trees and ferns and bushes. BeeBee sighed and thought what a beautiful place it would be to live. There was a wonderful smell in the air, that seemed to be coming from a strange, coloured plant. Then a family of salamanders ran over his foot. BeeBee stepped out of the way, and asked, “What’s the hurry?” BeeBee asked. “Where’s everyone going?”

One of the salamanders stopped for a second and said, “Haven’t you heard? The rains are coming. There’s going to be a terrible flood soon.”

“A flood?” said BeeBee. “But there’s no water here at all, not even a river.”

“If there was a river, it could carry the water away to the sea,” said the salamander, “but this plain is so flat that when the rains come, the whole plain is flooded. We’ve got to get to higher ground, or we’ll all be drowned.”

“What about all your homes, and the beautiful plants and trees?” BeeBee asked.

“They’ll all be washed away. It happens every year,” the salamander said. “I can’t stand around talking to you now, I have to go.” And it ran off as fast as its legs would carry it.

“Wait!” BeeBee called. “Can you tell me what this plant is, that smells so nice?”

“It’s called a flower,” said the salamander over its shoulder as it sped away.

“A flower,” BeeBee said, wonderingly. He thought about the whole plain being covered with water and everything being washed away, all the trees, the plants, and this flower. He made up his mind. He wasn’t going to let this plain be flooded if he could help it.

The flat plain was surrounded by low hills. BeeBee started by charging into the hills with his head down, over and over, until he made a gap through them. Then using his tail he dug a long trench from one side of the plain to the other, through the gap he had made in the hills. He dug more and more dirt out of the trench, making it good and wide, and he piled the dirt up on each side of the trench. Then he jumped up and down in the trench, making the bottom of it flat and hard.

The rains began, and still BeeBee dug and jumped and piled. It rained all day and all night, pouring down on the plain. Instead of spreading out over the plain and getting deeper and deeper, the rain water ran into the canal that BeeBee had made. It filled up the canal, and then it flowed through the gap in the hills, down to the valley on the other side and then out to the sea. The plain and all the animals and plants were saved.

Every year, BeeBee dug the canal a little deeper and piled the sides up a little higher, so that the plain could never flood again, no matter how heavy the rains were. The animals knew that their homes were safe, and the trees and flowers grew and flourished by the banks of the canal.

One day the salamander said to its friends, “We are very lucky we have BeeBee to look after us. But sometimes he seems unhappy.”

The mother crocodile said, “That’s because BeeBee has no bones, so he’s never going to be a fossil in a museum like the other dinosaurs.”

“I know a way that everyone will remember BeeBee long after all the dinosaur bones are dug up and taken away,” said a thoughtful iguana. So all the animals helped to carve a picture of BeeBee on a big flat rock where everyone could see it, so that he would always be remembered, for generations to come.