When he steps away from the ladder at the bottom, the crowd welcomes him with smiles, shouts, and clapping hands. Even Bumble, the Ringmaster, is happy to see him and they shake hands.
Abercrombie waves to the crowd and makes his way to where he left his bicycle. He heads for home.
Arriving home, he enjoys his supper and, as he is very tired, he puts on his red pajamas and slips into his nest on the riverbank.
As he closes his eyes he says, 'I sure had a fine adventure today.'
Dinosaur's Nest
The introduction to this next story is about an experience I had ten or so years ago at the Portland Museum of Science and Industry. My daughter was a volunteer at the museum at the time and, often, when I visited she invited me along to help at the museum too, which, of course, I did.
A popular exhibit at museums everywhere is one that displays models of the large reptiles that roamed the Earth millions of years ago. During one of my visits to my grandchildren in Portland, Oregon, the local museum had such an exhibit. There were so many different reptiles in the exhibit that, for my convenience in stories I hoped to write, I assigned each a popular and easily pronounced-and remembered-name. The names appear in this story: there was Albert the Apatosaurus, Pete the Pentaceratops, Palmer the Parasaurolophus, Sally the Stegosaurus, and Alice the Ankylosaurus. The exhibit also included a Petrushka the Pterodactyl and a Tallyrand the Tyranosaurus.
The museum's Albert the Apatosaurus had a baby daughter, Alexandra, and she slept in a doughnut-shaped nest after the museum closed for the night. As you can imagine, a doughnut-shaped nest, for even a toddler apatosaurus, is not the size of the bakery doughnuts with which you and I are familiar. Alexandra's doughnut-shaped nest was about ten feet across. The model had eighteen-inch diameter inflated tubes that enclosed a soft brown plastic floor.
When children touring the museum saw Alexandra's nest they rushed to climb the tube, jump down inside, and land hard on the soft plastic floor. With hundreds of jumping children each day, four or five at a time, the soft plastic soon scuffed and frequently needed repair. Alexandra didn't care to see her nest abused like that, and I felt sympathy for her. Fortunately, I was able to help; my job was to be the museum's official Fixer of the Apatosaurus Nest's Floor. My tools and supplies were a large roll of aluminum-colored adhesive tape, a tape measure and shears. Twice each day I inspected and repaired Alexandra's nest.
'Stand back for one moment, please.' I would say as I approached and identified myself to the jumpers. 'It is time to inspect the dinosaur's nest.'