Critter of the Month: Archaeopteryx

Meet Tango. This bird likes to party, and loves being the center of attention even more!

We’ve been working on my big boy’s reading skills, and he’s been struggling to focus on some of the stories in his workbook. To be perfectly frank, they’re not really stories so much as exposition on a particular topic. What’s exposition, you ask? In a word…boring! So I thought I’d write a few silly stories of my own for him to read!

Here’s the first little section. I’ll have it finished and post the complete story with the next critter of the month. Keep in mind this is for a beginning reader, so some sight words and words that he can sound out lol 😀

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Critter of the Month: Scutellosaurus

Meet Skittles.  She might be all hard and pebbly on the outside, but on the inside she wants nothing more than a nice warm hug.  Scratch just a little in between those rocky scutes, and she’ll roll on her back so you can rub her smooth, soft belly scales.

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The tips of her clawed toes softly scratched stone as she walked. Her head tilted this way and that, like a lizard, large eyes wide as she stared at the straight, dead trees and clean, flat ground. Shiny loops and ledges stuck out from smooth, white walls. Stone? She sniffed the air. Stinging, acidic, not natural, but underneath it was the scent of warm earth.

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Critter of the Month: Dilophosaurus

Meet Picasso.  This quiet softie loves spending time with his special person.  Snuggling under the tree to hear a good story?  That sounds like a lovely way to spend a warm afternoon. 🙂

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Picasso continued his routine patrol of the fence with all the decorum of a peacock. Each step deliberate so that not a single scrubby twig shifted, his fur-like feathers barely brushing against the wire grid too high to jump. Dry ferns and prickly scrub grew through the mesh at the foot of the fence, but ahead there was an emptiness in the dense line of browning vegetation. And the fence…the fence was gone!

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Critter of the Month: Ornitholestes

Meet Opie. He’s a happy little fella who loves to curl up in your lap, so it’s a good thing he’s about the size of a big dog!

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Sunlight streamed through the tangled layers of conifer branches and palm fronds to pierce the eternal twilight of the undergrowth. A cloud of tiny, reflective wings coiled like mist in the shaft of light, the thin whine of their hanging flight almost drowned by the whirring, buzzing, drumming, chirping of countless other unseen insects. Alien cries from leather-winged creatures called from above, answered and challenged by a cacophony of voices that clicked, whooped, hollered, whistled…any and every sound fighting to be heard through air so dense with foliage and humidity, constant moisture clung to the leaves and dripped to the black forest floor.

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Critter of the Month: Dryosaurus

Meet Rosie. She’s a bit shy, and might need a little encouragement to come closer.  A few treats should do the trick.  Before you know it she’ll be perfectly content to snuggle close and put her head on your lap. 🙂

 

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Patricia shut the gate behind her and scanned the paddock, but the small shed in the corner was empty, and nothing stirred in the grove of thick palms surrounding it. She pulled her supply wagon closer to the plastic feed bucket hanging on the fence line, and reached into a large canvas bag for a heaping scoopful of pellets. She dumped them into the bucket and tapped the plastic sides with the scoop.

“Rosie!” She tapped the bucket a few more times before jabbing the scoop into the feed bag.

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Critter of the Month: Apatosaurus

Meet Ajax. He’s a gentle giant with a big heart and a big appetite.  He’ll do anything for food and a belly rub.  And when I say anything, I mean anything…

 

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Ajax is big, heavy, and always hungry.  He’s got a knack for sniffing out treats and getting into places he shouldn’t.  He really didn’t think things through when he squeezed into the shed that one time… Continue reading