The Dinosaur's Diary (Young Puffin Story Books) by Julia Donaldson Read Free Book Online

Meg–Day, Several Weeks Later
    Sorry about the long gap. I meant to keep this diary every day but I’ve been too upset. Even when I realized I was ready to lay some new eggs, I didn’t feel much better.
    But today has been so amazing, like some weird dream, that I simply must tell you about it.
    This morning – it seems a lifetime ago! – I was wandering around
yet again
looking for a good egg-laying spot, when I heard a familiar crashing sound coming from the tall ferns. It sounded suspiciously like Τ Rex. But it wasn’t. It was a Megalosaurus – another of the awful, giant meat-eaters.

    Once again, my little legs went into action. But the ground was covered in puddles and rocks. Meg could leap over these, but I had to splash through the puddles and dodge round the biggest rocks, which slowed me down.
    I shouldn’t have glanced over my shoulder but I did, and that was how I tripped over a rock. I picked myself up quickly, but I had hurt my leg. I could only limp along. This is it, I thought to myself as the footsteps behind me grew louder.
    I splashed into yet another puddle and then realized that it
wasn’t
a puddle – not an ordinary one, anyway. It was much deeper, more like a well. I was being sucked under the water. So I wasn’t going to be eaten; I was going to drown!
    But I didn’t feel as if I was drowning. Strangely, I didn’t seem to need to breathe at all. I closed my eyes and let the water take me down, deeper and deeper.
    I felt myself being sucked around a corner, and then I was rising. Up, up, up! Faster and faster, until my head popped out of the water.
    Was I in the same puddle or a different one? Was the Megalosaurus there waiting for me?
    I opened my eyes and when I blinked the water out of them I found I was in some sort of pond, along with two creatures I had never seen before in my life. They were small (smaller than me!) and feathery, with beaks, and they were swimming about making what I can only describe as a quacking sound.
    When they saw me, they looked terrified. Fancy anyone being terrified of
me
! Flapping like mad they half-ran, half-flew out of the water on to an island in the middle of the pond. There they stood, beating their wings and sticking their necks out at me angrily.

    ‘Get out of our pond!’ they quacked.
    I swam to the bank and clambered out. I took no more notice of the two Quackosaurs, or whatever they were called, because now I could hear another sound, one that I didn’t like at all. I looked around me to see where it was coming from.
    There was no sign of the Megalosaurus, but in the distance I could see something even worse. Coming towards me over some strange-looking bumpy earth was a bright red monster. Instead of normal legs it had round ones that rolled across the ground. More alarming still, it was letting out a dreadful loud, deep roar.
    I didn’t stop to find out any more; I took off. I had no idea where I was going, and I was still limping slightly, but at least the ground I was running over was quite soft: it was covered in some very short bright green plants. Where were the horsetails? Where were the tall ferns?
    After several minutes I stopped and turned round. I could still see the big red creature in the distance, but it didn’t seem to be coming after me. In fact it was standing still and had stopped roaring.
    I could hear something else though, and it sounded like laughter – or rather, high-pitched, twittery giggling, coming from above my head.
    I looked up. Some creatures with wings and forked tails were flittering about in the air. They were even smaller than the Quackosaurs – a lot smaller, in fact.
    ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked them.
    ‘You are!’ said one of them cheekily. ‘Fancy running away from a tractor!’
    ‘Is that what that red monster is?’ I asked. ‘A – tractor, did you say? I suppose that must be short for Tractosaurus? Do you mean to say it’s a plant-eater?’
    The fork-tails seemed to think this was