Art by Sam Messerly.
Story by Nicholas Driscoll.
Click here to start at the beginning.
Bringing a tyrannosaurus to court is really difficult. I don’t know how long the judge (and whoever else is in charge of putting together a court proceeding) talked and planned, but it wasn’t long enough. Someone had paid a lot of money to make a large chair for the tyrannosaurus to sit in. The “dino-chair” did not survive one encounter with the tyrannosaur’s bottom. The tyrannosaur ended up mostly standing (he got antsy sometimes during the long court case, and his tail became a dangerous weapon as he twitched it around in boredom or agitation or whatever tyrannosaurs have for emotions).
The most amusing part for me was when the court tried to swear in the tyrannosaurus. To swear in a witness (in this case, a giant dinosaur), the witness is supposed to put one hand on a Holy Bible and one hand in the air. But it was really awkward to position the Bible so that the tyrannosaurus could put one of his claws on the book with his head jutting far out over the audience in the stands, and he looked really funny with his other hand sticking out at an awkward angle. Someone suggested that the dinosaur put his free hand over his heart instead, but then there was a debate about where a tyrannosaurus’ heart might be. I think everyone else in the room (including me) swore a lot more than the tyrannosaurus ever did.
“Honestly, I am not going to lie,” said the tyrannosaur after much foofaraw. “I think the truth is self-evident anyway.”
And the evidence was impressive. With some searching, the police were able to find over several dozen fossilized footprints that perfectly matched the tyrannosaur’s own foot (or feet) all around the city of Final Pumpkin (our city has a strange name related to agricultural scarcity and competition back in the day)—though there was some consternation about why many of those footprints had not been found before. The fact that some did not fit the rex’s feet caused concern that another dinosaur might be running rampant. Footprint experts came and talked about feet and described in detail the contours of the old lizard’s soles. I got so bored listening that I started watching the old lizard to see if he had any reaction to all the attention, but he didn’t seem very self-conscious. Even experiments on the cave in which the tyrannosaur had been sleeping, as well as his prehistoric pillow, came back with the same results: they (the dinosaur, the pillow, the cave) were really old.
So the tyrannosaur had been living in Final Pumpkin long before us humans had moved in. We just didn’t notice.
“And what’s more,” said the tyrannosaur, standing impressively in front of the lectern. “A tyrannosaurus is known as the king of the dinosaurs. It is just natural that I would also become the king of Final Pumpkin City.”
Finally, I took the witness stand to deliver my testimony as the first person to have met the rex, which gave my position an exaggerated sense of importance which I hadn’t really earned. Nevertheless, I was pretty upset by this point, and I would use any advantage I could get.
“Your honor, footprints don’t mean ownership,” I said. “I can walk through wet cement, but my shoe prints don’t mean I own the sidewalk. We have here an old lizard. But being old and a lizard doesn’t make someone royalty. That would be ridiculous.”
Some people were nodding in the audience. I pressed forward.
“Plus he can’t live in my garage,” I said. “I like my garage. I paid for my garage. A lot of money. This old lizard didn’t pay anything. He can live in his cave.”
I thought my arguments were really good. An hour later, the judge came back with the verdict.
“We don’t want to make the same mistakes our nation has made in the past,” said Judge Farrensquelcher, who was presiding. “This court recognizes the tyrannosaurus over there as the king of Final Pumpkin City.”
This time I really did faint dead away.