It Came From The Cretaceous

"That's cruel." Caught by the neighbor.

"Not really. There is nothing in this world safer than a velociraptor I'm chunking a rock at." It's a fact. Nobody stands behind me in horseshoes without a helmet. I don't always let go in time. The velociraptor in question leapt straight up to the wall and sneered at me before vanishing. It was beautiful; even I could see that.

"I guess you're not a velociraptor person," he said. "I love them."

"I do too. I've got one myself. She stays inside. And there's nothing I like better than a good velociraptor video like the one where they're playing patty-cake. OMG."

"I'd never keep mine in. It's not fair to them. They want to be outside."

"Yes. They do. And I want to share a pint of ale and a blanket on the moors with Liam Neeson."

"They made me promise at the Humane Society that I'd keep my velociraptor indoors, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Hey, I'm doing them a favor. I gave him a home."

"And a yard. Two, counting mine," I said, flinging a velociraptor turd out of my pea patch. No one should stand next to me when I'm doing that. I don't always let go in time. "Thanks a heap. Hey. I'd be okay with the turds and all, but do you have any idea how many birds they destroy?"

"I don't like that," my neighbor admitted. "But they're only doing what comes naturally. It's not their fault."

"That's right. It's yours. Because you're letting them outside to do it. You thought, 'look at my sleek, agile, athletic, adorable little pet killing-machine from the Cretaceous! Let's let it out and see what it can rip up!' It's a big deal, man. Domestic velociraptors take a huge toll on the songbird population. It's not minor. You, and everyone who feels the way you do, are introducing a completely unnatural predator into a world that has no defense for it, just because you think they're cool-looking and entertaining and they need to express themselves, even if they do it with their teeth and on birds. That's cruel."

"Unnatural? They've been around forever. I've had vellies my whole life."

"You're twenty-five. You think money has always come out of the side of a building. You think Cheetohs are food. You think I want to look at your underwear."

My neighbor looked hurt.  "You don't?"

"It's lovely," I said after a pause. "Listen. They haven't been here forever. They started out barely scraping by in a little patch of desert in the Middle East. Songbirds have evolved no defense against them whatsoever. Pet 'raptors like yours polish them off at a rate of nearly a billion a year."

"Maybe the birds need to learn to adapt."

"Well, they are adapting, if you mean they're transforming themselves into velociraptor turds. We can wait and see if natural selection leaves us with nothing but a crew of grossly overweight vultures, or we could exercise some control over our pets. Look. It's illegal to kill a migratory bird. You wouldn't think of popping out in the back yard with a shotgun, but if you cut loose a spring-loaded double-barrel velociraptor with fixed bayonets, I suppose that's all fine and dandy?" My voice was rising.

"You're crazy," he said, backing away.

"I have a refrigerator just for beer," I retorted. My neighbor followed me inside. Beer goes good with a scolding. With most things, really.

"Doesn't your vellie want to be outside?"

"She thought she did, at first, but amazingly enough it was raining sideways from a garden hose every time she stuck a foot out. Horrible velociraptor weather, it was. She's had a whole new outlook since then. Now she runs around the house stalking moths and lint balls and sunbeams. The only thing she's missing is the tiara. She's ecstatic. Watch her roll over for a belly rub." My velociraptor flipped over and rumbled with enthusiasm, rear legs pedaling through the air.

"See, they would have stayed there in the desert, just eking out a living in the shadows, creeping out the antique Mesopotamians, but when people started farming and storing grain, it was like opening up a rodent diner for them, and they started hanging out. Murdering birds is just something they do for a hobby. They didn't make it over to this country until my ancestors hauled them over in the Mayflower. Bird murder, smallpox, religion--we totally hit the trifecta with my people. Anyway, no reason we have to make it any worse than it is."

"Well--I never thought about it. Maybe my next velociraptor can stay indoors."

"Maybe this one, too, at least during nesting season. Think you can handle that for a month or so?"

My neighbor looked uncomfortable. "He'll be pretty annoying."

I bobbled my hands. "Annoying? Massacre. Annoying? Massacre. It's a puzzler, all right."

Dave strolled up as my neighbor shambled home.

"I see you're proselytizing again. You know, you keep this up and we won't have any friends left."

"Sure we will. We still have beer and a pickup truck. We'll never be lonely."

"Just because people learn about velociraptors being introduced predators, it doesn't mean they're going to change their ways."

"It might. I did."

"As I've had opportunity to observe several times a day, you're not normal. Nobody's going to change just because you ask them to. People don't change."

"I'm not so sure. Twenty years ago you never could have convinced me people would pick up iguanodon poop in a baggie, either."

I'm Networking, Baby

A year and a half ago, my neighbor Beth helped me set up my Facebook page late at night. "I'll friend you in the morning," she said, and I gratituded her for her help. The next morning, I had a message from someone I'd known since I was two, and hadn't heard from in forty years. It was extraordinary, delightful, and thoroughly spooky. I was trolling the ocean floor with a freshly wormed hook and I'd snagged a nice shiny fish, but what else was lurking in the depths?

Fortunately, due to an acute erosion of memory, I don't worry about anything for long. I reviewed my life and found it exemplary, my every human interaction at every age marked with virtue, and I rested easy. I was ready to embrace Facebook, social networking site and the world's foremost cat-video delivery system.

I wasn't alone. In late 2008 and early 2009 all the baby boomers in the world jumped onto Facebook at the same time, causing real news sources to leap off the web in order to keep everything spinning. They stormed the site like it was a free glucosamine dispensary. Saggy gray boomer mamas dreamed of old boyfriends whose last memories of them featured bandanna halter-tops in invitingly spacious overalls; they brushed up their photo-editing skills and took the leap. I did too.

Friends showed up. Real ones, ones I had missed. You lose track of friends over the years, and it was remarkable to be able to catch up all at once. For instance, it turned out a third of my old friends were now in the Mafia, which didn't surprise me, and another third were farmers, which did. By the time I had reached sixty friends, I had already traveled cross-country to meet long-lost high school pals. I was delighted with my collection.

Then new friend-requests started popping up. Who is this person? Why does he want to be my friend? My friend collection grew in accretions, certain key components barnacling up. I had an island of show-business people, an outcrop of writer types, and a whole reef of birders. The birder reef developed side protrusions of insect experts and one dinosaur guy. Eventually I met some of my virtual friends, and then my Facebook page settled out into people I actually know, people who know people I actually know, people who don't actually know people I don't actually know, and people who I don't know who the hell they are. And one French guy who probably mistook me for a cheese.

Sometimes I see a clever comment on my page, and I'll think: how do I not know this person? Is this one an actor, a writer, or a birder? One day I got an email from someone I knew I'd never heard of. She was sorry to inform me that a mutual friend had passed away, and that there would be a celebration of life I was welcome to attend. I looked him up, found him indeed among my friends, and mourned. He was so young, so handsome in his profile pic. What a loss it was, and I had only not known him for such a short time.

Baby boomers are particularly fond of Facebook because it helps us keep our focus. Now, instead of the scattered thoughts like "I should send money to Haiti" or "where did I put my coffee cup" or "when did that crap replace real music," we are focused like a laser on "I wonder if anyone put anything interesting on Facebook in the last fifteen minutes." It settles the mind.

That's one benefit. But I also now have ready access to people who can answer all my most vexing questions. What can their skeletal morphology tell us about the relationship of velociraptors to ostriches? Or, What is that thing crawling up my leg? You'd be surprised how often those questions come up.