Every girl's dream; a Velociraptor of my own.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will have heard, on occasion, about Henry. Henry is our Pilgrim Gander. He has been single since his mate, Henrietta was stolen off her nest and massacred a few springs ago. I have not found him a new mate, as the single Henry is possibly more tolerable than the married Henry. He is an aggressive little bugger at the best of times, and mating season is NOT the best of times. I have been waiting to see if he is as mean this year as he was last year. He was mean last year, but for a shorter period of time than when he had Henrietta as companion. When I say "mean", what I mean is he is fond of seeking out moving objects on which to latch with his strong, bruising beak and then beat senseless with his bony, brutish wings. Intimidating is a perfect word for Henry. And, willing to follow through on a threat. You will have heard me refer to him by his nickname "The Dinosaur".
I hadn't thought too much about his nickname. I guess anyone who had seen Jurassic Park and owned a seriously invested gander such as Henry would have made the connection. He acts and looks like a dinosaur. I wasn't literally saying his ancestors were Cretaceous, just cretins.

Then, I read the book Birdology by Sy Montgomery. Now, I know about Cassowaries. They are dinosaurs- ones that live in New Guinea and Australia. They have Dino DNA, and some direct lineage to the Velociraptor (Of Jurassic Park fame).

As it turns out, since sometime in the last decade, scientists have now determined by DNA sequencing, that many of the dinosaurs in fact had feathers and did not all die out in a big bang, but flew away to sit on our birdfeeders. Cassowaries are big, honking flightless birds. Somewhere around 150 pounds.  They are covered in feathers, mostly for protection, as I mentioned, they don't fly. The maybe most distinctive thing about this dino, is the bony hump on the head. It sticks up about 7 inches or so above the skull and is hard, but filled with spongy cartilaginous tissue. The thought is they use the hump to amplify sound and make a thrumming noise, deep and booming. This use of infrasound allows them to communicate with other Cassowaries far away- like humpback wales. Many dinosaurs also had this hump thing on their heads.  They have powerful legs, are speedy suckers and they have three toes. Only, the most medial toe isn't very toe-like. In fact, it is a bony saber. Sharp and no joke at around 9 inches long. They use it to kill things, defense and such.

Without the board, this Crocodile Dundee would be singing soprano. I suppose with the saber toe buried in a board, you might have caught yourself a Cassowary. Now what? In any case, in 2005 a North Carolina scientist found some viable tissue in a T. Rex bone, sequenced the genome and found it to be quite closely related to the chicken. Henry is a Dinosaur.

Now, the main habitat of the Cassowary in Australia was in Queensland. With much of Queensland totally devastated with flooding, I went online to see if I could find out what was happening to the Cassowaries. I found nothing. Maybe because very little is known. I just hope that since  they've made it through major natural disasters before (BOOM!) they figure this one out too.