Gourmet T-Rex

“Falafel” Tim shouted as he lunged through the dense foliage of the park. “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

Alas, Esmerelda Marcos, who at that time was enjoying the very falafel Tim smelled, did not speak dinosaur, so all she heard was a terrifying roar and the thunderous sound of dinosaur footfalls slamming against the jungle floor. Naturally, she ran, taking her food with her.

Dejected, Tim trudged back into the forest, once again deprived of a good meal. Being an epicurean T-Rex was harder than one might imagine. He had no money with which to purchase funnel cakes and curries and fine wines and his tiny hands could neither pull discarded plates of kung pao chicken from trash bins nor lift them to his mouth if he wanted to. For the unfortunate circumstances of his birth, being a fifteen foot tall seven ton giant lizard with a reputation for brutal carnage, he would never know the joy of fois gras, beef wellington, or chicken cordon bleu.

It was disheartening, he was so hungry. Alas. At least he could always count on the staff of the island park to provide him with veal tartare, even if it was lacking in spices and he had to mince the meat with his own teeth.

- Originally mailed to S. Gill of Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Easy Paleontology

Bill had always wanted to be a paleontologist, but everyone told him it was backbreaking work fraught with disappointment. He'd heard bone diggers complain all the time about researching dig sites, breaking out the picks and shovels, chipping away ever so carefully through layer after layer of rock all on the hopes that they might find some fossil, which they would have to painstakingly excavate over the course of weeks, months, or sometimes longer. They would complain about the risks of shipping the fossils back to universities and museums. They shared horror stories of bones being damaged or lost all together, of skeletons being assembled incorrectly.

He never found it to be particularly difficult. In his experience, skeletons could most reliably be found in museums, particularly natural history museums and children's museums. Often times, there next to the other skeletons that paleontologists had labored for months and years over, he would find a wood frame, already pre-gridded, brushes waiting, and without fail beneath a thin layer of sand, dinosaur bones. He didn't even have to ship them. They were already in the museum. He just brushed aside the dirt and called the display complete before setting off for another museum in another city to do the work others said was so hard. He could do several complete digs in a week.

“Paleontology isn't hard at all,” he would say as he dusted off the dirt of his second skeleton of the day, conveniently located on the fourth floor of the Orlando Science Center. “Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”

- Originally mailed to S. Johnson in Lafayette, Indiana

Super Model Dinosaurs

Life as a super model was almost everything Edmont and Cera had ever wanted. The work was easy. They went to the gallery and posed from sun up to sun down, while everyone, men, women, and children, fawned over them and took their pictures. Their pictures beamed, bright and glossy on billboards and magazine covers and promotional items for their managing museum. People came from all over the world to see them. They were magnificent, and they knew it.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, however. They didn't get to travel as much as they would like. They didn't get to travel at all, in fact. They would never see Paris or New York or Milan. They would never share the Fashion Week runways. They never got to wear the best designers. For that matter, they never got to wear anything at all. They were only ever hired for nude work, and some days it took all they had not to feel degraded. Most of all, however, they disliked the diets. It was not uncommon for models of their fame to look emaciated, but for fear of being replaced, Edmont and Cera felt compelled to eat so little as to remain down right skeletal.

Still, they were stars. It had taken a long time—sixty-five million years to be precise—but they were finally famous.

- Originally mailed to P. Wilkinson from Vancleave, Mississippi

Resurrecting Dinos

For as long as she could remember, Clarissa wanted a pet dinosaur. As child, she envisioned playing fetch with her pet stegosaurus, sending her pterodactyl to fetch frisbees that had gotten stuck on the roof, or in her more cruel fantasies, playing tag with her very own t-rex, knowing she would win easily against his tiny arms. After seeing Jurassic Park for the first time as a child, her whole world changed. Dinosaur pets were no longer mere fantasy, but an actual possibility. All throughout high school and well into college, she poured over the science and dived head first into any cutting edge research regarding paleontology, cloning, or a combination of the two. When a professor finally gave her the cold hard truth, that science couldn't bring dinosaurs back from extinction, she wept for weeks. Not one to give up so easily, however, she persevered and finally found success in the one avenue for dino resurrection left to her: necromancy.

 - Originally mailed to C. George in San Diego, California