"Houston...?"

             “Okay,” Houston, my right-hand, said by way of greeting. “We have a problem.”

We had worked at the aviary together for many years, and I’d always known him to be an interesting fellow. I no longer considered his gruffness to be a mark of aggravation, nor was this the most unusual greeting he’d given me in recent months. He wasn’t your average right-hand, but I trusted him with almost anything.

             “What’s the matter now?” I asked. “Did they reject your request for changing the uniform?”

             “What? No! I just submitted those forms yesterday, after I went through the proper channels to get them, and did I mention I had to get the things notarized in triplicate just to file?”

He had mentioned it. Many times since yesterday.

             “You wouldn’t expect a color change to be so difficult to request. It’s almost as if they’ve intentionally made it a nearly insurmountable task so they can keep us in these same drab beige numbers.” Our uniforms weren’t terrible, but they did make us look a bit like Steve Irwin, and as a lover of the late, great Crocodile Hunter, I had conflicting feelings about the whole thing.

             “Yeah, it looks that way, but I stand by everything I’ve told you about the need for unnaturally occurring colors like a hot pink or a magenta. The birds deserve to not be snuck up on.”

             “I agree, I agree,” I consoled him before he began his tirade— though his passion always amused and inspired me. Oh, to have a flame like his for. . . well, anything, really.

             “What’s our problem, bud?” I handed him a sub I’d picked up for his lunch, just so I wouldn’t forget to give it to him later. I didn’t expect him to begin eating it, but he did. As he spoke, he gesticulated with the bread and flung little bits of lettuce around the office, though our problems were so much larger than messy floors.

             “Okay,” he began, “the raptors have escaped.”

             “Which ones? It might not be so bad if we’ve lost a couple falcons, but that golden eagle and the kestrel were like family!”

             He paused mid-chew and cocked an eyebrow. “It’s good to know you have favorites, I guess.”

I flushed and began to protest but he waved the sandwich at me to stop.

             “No, the raptors got out. The raptor raptors.”

I was confused and told him so. He sighed and rubbed his eyes with a hand.

             “Okay. Do you remember a few months ago you told me we ought to see about any raptors that might need to be housed in the aviary?”

I did.

             “Well, I saw about it and I emailed a guy for a few weeks and didn’t know if anything would come of it, but he came through with five raptors. Raptor raptors.”

             “You keep saying ‘raptor raptors’ like it’ll clear it up for me but it really doesn’t.”

             “Okay. Do you remember Jurassic Park?”

             “The movie or the book?”

             “It doesn’t matter.”

             “Oh, it matters a lot, actually! The villain of the book was human error and complexity theory while the movie’s villain was Newman and maybe capitalism?”

             “Okay. Well, maybe all of those villains are responsible together? In this situation?”

It seemed to me that Houston was being intentionally opaque.

“Houston, tell me what’s going on. No B.S..”

He stopped chewing again, scarfed another bite, then swallowed hard and looked me dead in the eyes:

“Okay. No B.S.? I got real-life, honest-to-goodness dinosaurs and now they’re gone.”

I don’t often drink; it isn’t really my vice. But when Houston said that, earnestly, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to upend a bottle of whiskey right into my mouth, or begin searching for the camera for the prank show I must obviously have been on.

“Houston, what are you saying?” I was reeling, but I needed information if I was going to plan any sort of reaction. Houston pulled out his phone and went to his pictures, choosing one and holding it out for me to inspect.

“I’m not sure this is what you meant to show me,” I pulled back a little at the sight of exposed flesh, but Houston jerked the phone at me, insisting I look. It was a video, and as I watched, the flesh was snatched at by something. The camera twisted to follow the movement and I caught sight of a scaly-but-feathered looking creature run off and disappear into the greenery. My jaw dropped and I restarted the video to be sure of what I’d seen.

“I told you,” Houston said, mouth full once again. “Raptor raptors.”

I watched all the bits of raptor media Houston had captured with his phone and while I couldn’t be fully convinced, I decided it was imperative that I assume the claim was real and that there was an emergency on our hands.

“How did they get out? Where were you keeping them?” I had more questions, but I tried to ordinate them based on level of pertinence.

“Okay. I don’t know how they got out, but I was keeping them in the southwest corner. I’d put up a fence and everything, did you notice?”

I had noticed, but it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time; I had trusted Houston. I shook my head at that thought. I still trusted Houston, but this was a bit more than an oversight.

             “The good thing is that we’re closed today, and I checked on them last night, so they must’ve gotten out between close of yesterday and opening of today.” He didn’t seem to be heartened by this, but it was something.

             “What about the guy who sold them to you? Did he say anything about proper raptor handling or what to do if they escaped?”

             “That’s the interesting thing,” Houston crumbled the empty sandwich wrapper as he frowned. “The guy just gave them to me. Like, for free. I have his business card so maybe we call him?”

             I was growing more and more bewildered and a surreal anxiety began to form in the back of my mind.

We called the number.

             “Y’ello,” said the raptor guy.

             “Hi, sorry— are you the one who gave the aviary raptors?”

There was a brief rustle on the other end of the call. He continued, sounding suspicious:

             “Might be. Who’s askin’?”

             “Yes, well, I’m in charge of the aviary, and Houston, the fellow who talked to you about the raptors—”

             “Houston! Yeah, I remember him!” He chuckled jovially.

             “Right, Houston! Well, see he’s just told me that we had raptors, but that they’ve gone and escaped! And well, seeing as how you’ve had raptors before, I thought we might ask for your input on the situation.” I waited nervously for his response.

             “My input?”

             “Yes, if you would.”

             “My input is that you’re screwed, friend.”

             “I see.”

             “Yeah you’re up a creek without a paddle. Frankly, if there’s one thing you shouldn’t do if you’ve got raptors in your place, it’s let ‘em get loose. I thought that would’ve been evident from all the movies about how they get loose and ruin everything.”

             “Right; you’re right.”

             “I mean, you remember Jurassic Park, right?”

I was well and thoroughly annoyed when I finally got off the phone, but the raptor guy had at least given us something that could potentially make the situation much better: there was a GPS tracker in each raptor which we could theoretically use to find and recapture the things.

“That’s pretty much all the help I can offer on this side of things,” the raptor guy had said, and I could almost hear his shrug through the phone.

“I’m curious,” I had begun, dying for answers but knowing time was scarce. “How did you get them and why did you give them to us?”

“Oh, I made ‘em!” His pride had sparked up. “Yeah, I spliced a buncha things together and followed a general outline of what a raptor’s supposed to be. I mean, they ain’t perfect, but it was my first time, so I figure I’m due a little leeway. Anyway, I couldn’t keep ‘em ‘cause the home-owner’s association frowns on exotic pets and I couldn’t exactly prove that they weren’t exotic, on account of their genetic make-up being so. . . different. Houston was the first person to show an interest and I figured they’d fit right in with the other creatures in your aviary.”

In an odd way, his response had made sense. At least, as much sense as could be made out of a situation like this.

I told Houston about the trackers and he went to his computer and logged into the site the raptor guy had given us and brought their positions up.

“Okay; Don’t be mad,” he said, scanning the screen. “But it looks like they’re right where I left them.”

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”

“Okay, I said don’t be mad.”

“THIS HAS BEEN A BIT OF A ROLLERCOASTER, HOUSTON!”

“Yeah, I know, but at least maybe the rollercoaster is over? Maybe?”

I sighed.

             “I really hope so, bud,” I said, defeated.

             “Me too,” he paused for a moment, then:

             “We do have to check though, right?”

             Houston grabbed a game steward’s bag from the closet. When I cocked an eyebrow, he shrugged and handed me a canister of olive leaf powder.

             “We don’t really have all that much in the way of anti-raptor measures here.”

             “It’s almost as if the aviary wasn’t meant to be a place to keep raptor raptors.”

He maturely rebutted by making a face at me.

             “Think this stuff’ll work?” I asked, meaning the canister.

             “It’s all we’ve got to work with, so it’s worth a shot. It calms the birds down some, but at the very least, it might work as a kind of distraction.”

I was not overwhelmed with confidence, but we headed out into the greenery, Houston monitoring the trackers on his phone. We made it through to the southwest area untouched, and we approached the fence Houston had set up slowly. It was a not-insignificant amount of space that he’d set aside for these things, and I was beginning to wonder if we’d have to circle around the whole area to find them when I saw something move. I got Houston’s attention and pointed in the direction I’d seen the movement. We trained our eyes on the area and stood as still as we could, and then the greenery moved again and there were raptors. Real, live raptor raptors. If I wasn’t standing in front of them, watching with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it, but there was no denying they were real. We stayed frozen, Houston’s arms outstretched like an expectant hug in some kind of magnifying gesture, and we waited to see what the raptors would do. One by one, they passed by the fence nearest us, until five raptors had been confirmed, and when their curiosity in the area had been satisfied, they retreated back into their greenery. We let out a sigh and I looked at Houston, who continued to hold his position.

“You know,” I started, smirking, “with that outfit and that pose, you kind of look like you’re about to wrestle one of those over-sized crocodiles.”

“I wish. Steve Irwin was my idol.”

“He was everyone’s idol!”

“I could refute that, but I’d like to live in a world where that’s true.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, trailing off. Houston put his arms down and we looked at each other for a moment, then:

“We really need to get these things out of here.”

“Yeah, they cannot stay here.”